


Love of the Second Degree

by all_my_dreams_and_ambitions



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Detectives, F/M, M/M, Murder, Past relationship! Noah/Blue, Slow Burn, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-01-20 04:17:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 38,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12424851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_my_dreams_and_ambitions/pseuds/all_my_dreams_and_ambitions
Summary: Love of the Second Degree; an unpremeditated love resulting from a crush in which a relationship is a distinct possibility.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to give a special thanks to lynchsparrrish on tumblr for helping me iron out the kinks in this story!  
> The good news is that it's outlined and ready to go. The bad news is that you're going to have to wait a week between updates.

_**Prologue** _

 

_Niall Lynch was many things. He was a hard worker, a father, a dreamer, and a gambler. He was exceptionally great at the first two things. His work often forced him to be gone from the Lynch homestead for several days or weeks at a time. When he was home, however, much of his time was spent devoted to his children._

_Matthew Lynch was the youngest. He was sweet, pure, and good. When he’d been born Niall knew that the boy and his mother, Aurora Lynch, were the same. Matthew loved unconditionally, with his whole heart. He was one for protecting._

_Declan Lynch was the oldest and he felt his father’s absence more than the others. He wasn’t like his mother, nor was he like his father. So, he spent the majority of his childhood trying to excel at everything he did. Something inside of him hoped to earn his father’s approval. He knew his mother would love him whether he failed or succeeded, but Niall was harder to please. Declan was simply one for being._

_Niall often boasted that he and Ronan were cut from the same cloth. They were one and the same, he and his middle son. Not only were they similar in looks with their dark hair and fair skin, but they were similar in behavior. Ronan threw himself aggressively at every task at hand. His passion for the animals at the farm, for Matthew, and for his father burned deep. He would go at lengths to ensure his brother and his mother stayed safe while Niall was gone. He was the one to do the protecting._

* * *

 

 

** _One_ **

 

**__**

_It was a warm, summer morning when Ronan remembered his father was coming home. When he’d peeked into his mother’s room he found Aurora lying peacefully in her bed, sleeping. However, a glance out the window revealed the sleek charcoal gray BMW Niall Lynch drove._

_Ronan’s heart had pounded with excitement. His father was home! He hardly had time to stuff his feet into a pair of sneakers before he flung open the screen door to the farmhouse and clattered off of the porch. The gravel had kicked up under his feet as he dashed across the drive to the car._

_Then, the closer he got the more wrong it had felt._

_The driver’s side door was open, the door beeped, keeping time with Ronan’s heart pounding in his chest._

_The sound of bagpipes played from the car, a tune that the boy recognized instantly because Niall was often whistling or humming while he worked._

_Dread was Ronan’s stomach in knots. He slowed to a walk as he rounded the rear of the car. The trunk had been popped and left open just a crack. That was wrong. It was all wrong._

_The first thing he saw when he rounded the driver’s side of the car was the blood. It was soaking into the dust, leaving behind red mud. There was a lot of it._

_The second thing was his father. If it hadn’t been for the cross hanging around his neck and the shock of dark hair on his head, Ronan wouldn’t have recognized him. He had been beaten so severely to the point of being unidentifiable._

_The weapon in question had been a crowbar, which laid covered in blood and brain matter a few feet away._

_Niall Lynch had been murdered and his son had been sleeping just a few feet away._

 

    The memory of discovering his father’s body was fresh in Ronan’s mind as he tore down the interstate towards town. It was like a bone that had never been set right. Talking about Niall Lynch didn’t hurt him anymore, but every now and again it left a deep, throbbing ache within him.

    Niall’s killer had never been found and that was the only reason Ronan was speeding through town at twice the limit in the middle of the night. It was the only reason he’d gone to college to be a detective. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d just be working on the family farm and doing nothing else.

    Ronan hated his fucking job.

    He hated that Gansey had called to wake him in the middle of the night when he’d finally been getting a decent sleep for a change. He hated knowing what awaited him at the crime scene, that somewhere there was a family grieving for the loss of a loved one.

    The lights of the police cars flashed blue and red in front of a restaurant in town. The lights were on in the apartment building above, Ronan could see his coworkers moving about in their uniforms.

    He got out of the BMW, switching off the red and blue lights he’d had installed in it when he’d first started (because he told Declan he wasn’t driving around in one of those shit-mobiles many in the department had). He slammed the door hard enough to make the car rock and strode toward the apartment.

    “Gansey is freaking out,” Noah said as he met Ronan in the stairs. His blond hair was tousled, his eyes were sleepy. “He thinks it’s Glendower.”

    “Gansey thinks every killing is tied to Glendower,” Ronan grumbled before pushing past Noah and moving up the rickety stairs.

    “It’s creepy up there.”

    “You think everything is creepy.”

    Noah shrugged, “Don't say I didn’t warn you.”

    Ronan and Gansey had been friends since high school. They both had attended a private college called Aglionby Academy. Gansey told Ronan he had wanted to go to a good school so he could go to an even better college to become a detective.

    He could still remember the sparkle in his eyes as he leaned over to Ronan and whispered, “What do you know about Owen Glendower?”

    Ronan hadn’t known much about Glendower except for the fact that he was a mass murderer from Wales who had a very specific way of killing his victims and leaving their bodies for the authorities to find. He hadn’t wanted to know too much about it because he’d had enough murder to last him a lifetime after finding Niall’s body. However, he tolerated Gansey’s obsession because it was clear their friendship wasn’t ending anytime soon.

    The stairs creaked under Ronan’s feet as he stomped up them. When he got to the top he found Gansey studying the body, his thumb brushing against his lower lip thoughtfully.

    The body was face down, the arms bound behind his back, wrists left slashed open. The victim’s legs had been bound at the knees and again at the ankles.

    “I’ll be damned,” Ronan said as he stood next to Gansey. He knew enough about Owen Glendower to know that this was exactly the way he left his victims.

    “We’ll know as soon as we turn him over,” Gansey replied. Ronan’s vulgar language didn’t bother him.

    He looked around the apartment and cringed. Noah wasn’t wrong. It was fucking creepy. Shelves of dolls lined the walls. Some of the porcelain figurines were in perfect condition, but their eyes all seemed to stare at them. Others were cracked, chipped, broken, their mouths twisted up in wry smiles like they knew a secret they weren’t willing to tell.

    “It’s incredible that a dead body is the least creepy thing in this room,” he told Gansey before looking at the body again.

    “Hm,” he acknowledged. He moved past Ronan and peeked down the narrow staircase. “Does anybody know where Parrish is?”

The door opened and shut. Adam’s voice drawled up the stairs, “I’m right here.”

Ronan rolled his eyes and folded his arms over his chest. Adam fucking Parrish was another reason he hated his job.

Adam appeared in the doorway, his dusty hair glinted off of the light emitted from a dingy bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The shadows cast from the light made his high cheekbones more elegant, turning his freckles to tan speckles flecked across his skin. His blue eyes locked with Ronan’s and then turned to the body. He did his best to stay out of the half-dried, bloody pool the body was lying in and crouched down next to it. “I see what you mean,” he said to Gansey.

“Could it be Glendower?”

“Could be.”

Ronan rolled his eyes again and watched as Adam pulled on a pair of white gloves over his long fingers. One of the reasons he hated Parrish was because the second he’d come in the department he and Gansey had been thick as thieves. Gansey went to him for everything; opinions, questions, ideas.

In reality, there was no reason for Ronan to be irritated about it and that very fact annoyed him.

Adam inspected the bound wrists, the skin around his eyes going tight. “Deep lacerations to the wrist were the cause of death. The knife didn’t appear to be really sharp.”

    “How long has the victim been dead?” Gansey asked.

    Adam looked at the copious amounts of half-dried blood on the floor and then the corpse again. “I’d say around twenty-four hours.”

    This answer seemed to satisfy him because he went back to rubbing his lower lip with his thumb.

    Adam rolled the body over and they all sucked in a collective breath.

    The man’s shirt was in shreds, hanging off of his barrel chest along with the torn skin beneath it. A jagged ‘G’ was carved into his chest, some of the cuts were so deep that the bone was visible beneath it.

    Gansey crouched next to Adam. “This is him,” he said. Although he tried to keep it at bay, the excitement was audible in his voice.  “This is the work of Glendower.”

    “How can you be so sure?” Ronan asked. He didn’t do it to piss on Gansey’s parade. He asked because he knew how his friend could get. Gansey threw himself at anything that had to do with Owen Glendower with reckless abandon. If this proved to be false, he’d be crushed.

    “I’m not,” Adam said. His eyes looked up to Ronan for two heartbeats, vibrant and alive. He then turned his attention back to Gansey. “Something about this doesn’t sit right with me. Why would Owen Glendower come out of hiding ten years after his last murder? We can’t find him. Why would he jeopardize that?”

    A crease formed between Gansey’s brow and he stood up again. Ronan knew it was because he knew, as always, Adam was right.

    Adam stood up too, looking at the two of them. “We’re going to have to dig out Glendower’s case files and review the evidence before we jump to any conclusions.”

    Ronan resisted the urge to groan. He hated desk work.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everybody who has read, commented, and given kudos to this story! I'm so thrilled that it's gotten quite the positive response!  
> Making Glendower a serial killer was a risk, but it appears that people really enjoy it.  
> Thanks again to lynchsparrrish on tumblr for being amazing!  
> Enjoy!

Ronan had spent the day off mending one of the fences that lined the cow pasture. Those bastards were sneaky and seemed to get out at least once a week. Thankfully, they never strayed too far from their pasture. They know who fed them. 

Chainsaw quorked at him from a nearby fencepost, inspecting his handiwork with a quizzical eye.

“Do you think you could do a better job?” He asked the bird, pulling his headphones off of his shaven head and resting them around his neck. 

She flapped her wings in response.

“I didn’t think so.” 

He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket. He had two missed calls from Matthew and a text from Gansey. It simply read,  **_Nino’s 3:00._ ** He glanced at the time before he put it in his pocket. 

Ronan picked up his hammer and the spool of wire and headed further down the fence. He had just started pounding in another prong to hold the new fence when he heard Matthew call his name. 

“Ronan!” Matthew had an odd way of looking out of place while simultaneously looking like he belonged at the Barns. It was a strange combination that none of the other Lynch boys seemed to pull off.. Declan looked severely out of place when he visited (which never happened) and Ronan appeared to fit in here and nowhere else. 

Ronan stopped his hammering and straightened up, leaning on the fence post. He smiled at his little brother, observing the way the sun glinted off of his golden curls. “What brings you here?”

“I’m headed back to school,” Matthew said. 

He’d been in town visiting his girlfriend for the weekend. As always, he made time to see both of his older brothers while he was home. 

“Did you guys really find another body the other night?” He held out his hand. 

Ronan did the handshake they’d formulated years ago. He avoided looking at Matthew, knowing that his brother had a morbid curiosity about Ronan and Declan’s jobs. 

“You did, didn’t you?” 

“Yeah. We did.” 

“What was it like?” 

Ronan gave him a firm look. He didn’t want to share this information with his little brother. It was twisted and fucked up. He knew Matthew was an adult now at the ripe young age of eighteen, but it always made him feel like he was stealing away the precious innocence that he somehow managed to preserve. 

“ _ Ronan _ ,” he begged. 

“It was really fu--messed up, okay?” He allowed. He knew Declan hated it when Ronan talked to Matthew about work. It wasn’t against the rules if he didn’t give out names, so it wasn’t that. It was more about preserving Matthew’s youth and wide-eyed innocence about the world. 

Matthew looked at his brother with wide, hopeful eyes. 

“It’s really messed up that you’re so into this, you know.” 

“You’re still going to tell me anyway.” 

Ronan sighed. 

He was right.

“We got there and the room was full of these creepy ass dolls. The victim was tied up with his hands behind his back, bound at the knees and ankles. His wrists were slashed open and he had a ‘G’ carved into his chest. Gansey thinks it’s Glendower.”

Matthew listened, his face open and horrified fascination like a child listening to a scary story. “Wow,” he breathed. “Do you? Do you think it’s Glendower?”

“Maybe. We’re looking into it.”

“You guys could be the first ones to catch the most infamous serial killer in the United States!” 

“ _ Maybe _ ,” Ronan emphasized firmly.

“Ronan, he’s the  _ king _ of serial killers!” Matthew reached over and stroked Chainsaws sleek feathers. She allowed it but only because it was Matthew and nobody else. 

Ronan didn’t want to talk about Glendower or work anymore. It was like being at work while he wasn’t at work and he knew his lunch with Gansey and Noah would be centered around Glendower talk. So, he asked, “how is school?” 

He collected his tools and his raven while Matthew told him about his classes. The talk extended to their trek across the field and back to the house where their cars sat next to one another. 

“I have to go see Declan,” Matthew finally said.

“Drive safe. Text me when you get back to school.” Ronan hated his phone, but he didn’t mind using it when he knew Matthew had made a safe commute. 

“I will.” 

They performed their handshake again and Ronan stood in the dusty drive as he watched Matthew’s car pull away.

* * *

 

Nino’s was busy as per usual. The local private school boys were crowded around at various tables, most of them glad to be out of class for the day. 

He found Noah and Gansey sitting around their usual table in the back corner of the restaurant. Ronan threw himself into the booth next to Gansey.

“You smell like you were working on a farm,” Noah said after bumping fists with him. 

“And your hands feel like you’ve been jacking off a snowman,” he retorted.

“ _ Ronan _ ,” Gansey said sternly. 

“Sorry, Gramps. Did I offend you?” 

“It was particularly vulgar and we are in an establishment for  _ eating _ if you haven’t noticed.” 

Ronan made a show of gawking around the restaurant, “huh.” 

Gansey didn’t acknowledge that his friend was being a dick. He rarely ever did, knowing it gave Ronan satisfaction. “So were you working on the family farm today, Lynch?” 

“Yeah. The cows broke the fence again.” 

“Electrify it!” Noah suggested. 

“No. Matthew came to visit me again before he went back to school. He was curious about the other night.” 

“Did you tell him anything?” Gansey asked.

“A little.” 

He made a sound in his throat similar to the way a parent of an unruly toddler would. “You know Declan hates that.” 

“I know.” 

“Why do you insist on antagonizing him?” 

Ronan didn’t answer. Things between himself and his brother had been tense and strained ever since their father had been killed and their mother had gone into the nursing home. Declan tried to be the authority figure in the family and Ronan had trouble with any kind of authority. Especially, if it was his older brother. 

They ordered their pizza and got refills on their sweet tea. 

Gansey was going on about the tea, but something in the way he was talking and the way he was fidgeting told Ronan that there was something he was trying to avoid talking about it.

“What is it, Dick?” He finally asked. 

“This?” He held up a lemon that had garnished the glass. “It’s lemon. A citrus fruit, originating from--” 

“Adam is coming,” Noah said.

“You’re kidding.”

Gansey put the lemon down and sat back in his seat, fixing a stern gaze on Ronan. “You two are partners on this case whether you like it or not. It’s best the two of you start to get along, Ronan. It could be worse.” 

“Yeah,” Noah added, “it could be  _ Declan _ .” 

They were right.

When Adam arrived, he looked very out of place at Nino’s. He was dressed in a button-down shirt and khakis. He slid into the booth next to Noah and bumped fists with Gansey across the table. 

“What do you say about Glendower?” Gansey asked him.

Ronant groaned. Once again, he hated talking about work outside of work. Especially, with his co workers.

“I’m not convinced that it’s him,” he said. A frown line appeared between his eyebrows as he talked. “I mean, it  _ could _ be. It’s exactly like everything he’s done before. Something is just...off about it.” 

The pizza arrived. They helped themselves.

“It’s been ten years since he’s killed,” Gansey said as he chewed on a slice. “It could just be that he’s out of practice.” 

“Maybe,” Adam agreed. He pressed the a thumb to his lips where he’d gotten sauce on it.

Ronan swallowed. 

Adam met his gaze.

He looked away.

“I was combing through evidence today--” 

Ronan groaned, “working on your day off? Parrish, you over-achiever.”

Adam gave him a cool look, “there’s a killer on the loose. I’d like to get him locked up before anybody else gets hurt.” 

Ronan didn’t reply. He supposed he could understand. His father’s murderer had never been caught. 

“And?” Gansey pressed, clearly interested in whatever Adam had to say.

“And there are plenty of similarities between this murder and Glendower’s murders. Everything is pretty much the same. It still doesn’t make sense to me. He would be foolish to come out of hiding.” 

“A copycat?”

“Possibly. He has a daughter. Her name is Gwenllian. We could try and talk to her and see if she knows anything about her father.” 

“It’s a start.” 

When they finished eating, shadows were starting to grow long and the hot air was starting to cool. Ronan left the other three at the table while he went to take a piss. He would bid them farewell in the parking lot. 

He stopped when he saw Declan leaning against the BMW’s charcoal gray paint. Judging by the stubborn set of his jaw and the stiffness in his shoulders this was not going to be a pleasant meeting. 

“Ronan,” he said it like like it left a foul taste in his mouth. 

“Declan.” 

“We need to talk.” 

Ronan moved to the car. He couldn’t get in because Declan had cleverly positioned himself against the driver’s side door. “I don’t want to talk.” 

“How many times are we going to fight about this?” 

Ronan clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides, his shoulders tense. He knew this was about Matthew. Heaven forbid his younger brother keep his mouth shut. “He’s a grown man, Declan. If has wants to know about murders, let him.” 

This set Declan off. He stood up straight, grabbing his brother by the front of his black tank, and slammed him against the side of the car with a hefty thud that forced the air out of Ronan’s lungs. “He does  _ not  _ need to know about the sick and twisted shit in this world. He’s only eighteen. He’s still a fucking boy!” 

Ronan’s jaw twitched and he shoved him with a snarl, “get the fuck off of me!” 

Declan shoved him back.

Ronan’s anger ignited. He didn’t think before he swung a clenched fist and let it connect with Declan’s face. 

It had been a punch intended for his perfectly straight nose, but the oldest Lynch son knew this game and he played it just as well as his younger sibling. He managed to snap his head to the side and catch it on the cheek instead. He returned the blow with one of his own. 

It was a deadly dance the two of them did as they'd done any times before. The smack of flesh on flesh was the loudest thing, only interrupted by breathy grunts and flared nostrils. 

Ronan saw stars as his head was smacked off of the side of the car. His ears rang as it connected with the paint, which was blistering in the Virginia heat. He let out a ferocious snarl and hit his brother with each fist, one right after the other, before he managed to stagger away from the car. 

He could taste the coppery tang of blood on his tongue from biting his lip when he’d been hit. It was the realest thing in this moment of swinging fists and angry words. It was sharp and unforgiving. 

“ _ Ronan Lynch _ !” Gansey’s voice was loud and commanding as he watched the brothers fight.

Ronan stopped from where he stood over his brother who was thrown across the hood of his car. His fist was cocked back, ready to deliver another blow. 

“Ronan, that’s enough.” Gansey’s voice was quiet, firm. 

He was trembling from adrenaline as he lowered his fist and released his brother’s shirt. His voice dripped acid as he said, “get the fuck off of my car.”

Declan stood up, brush a smear of blood off of his cheek with his thumb. “That’s the last time I’m going to tell you, Ronan. Leave Matthew out of this.” 

“Fuck off.” 

He did. Declan got in his car, started the engine, and left Nino’s parking lot with a rev of the engine. 

Gansey started, “Ronan--”

“Don’t!” He hissed. He climbed into the BMW and fired it up. He pulled out of the parking lot in a squeal of rubber. 

Adam’s face stuck with him when he left the parking lot. There was something closed off and uncertain in it. It was a look that Ronan had never seen him wear before.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thanks to lynchesparrrish on tumblr for reading and double-checking my chapters for me. Not to mention, she helps me with my writer's block! This chapter was particularly hard to write because Gwenllian was a challenge for me. Hopefully, I didn't botch it too terribly!
> 
> Some of you are asking about Blue. Well, she doesn't come in until Chapter Eight. Don't worry, she takes on a big part of the story after that.

Ronan’s job ensured that he got a daily dose of crazy. It was jam-packed with crazy experiences, crazy cases, and crazy people. Gwellian Glendower was the craziest person he’d ever met by far.

She had a mess of dark hair that was piled on top of her head (apparently, the prison couldn’t force her to run a comb through it once every few days), her eyes sparkled with mischief, and eighty percent of whatever she said came out in a song that either didn’t make sense or made jabs at Ronan and Adam.

Ronan glanced at Adam out of the corner of his eye. 

He glanced back, the corner of his mouth tipped up the slightest bit. 

At least Ronan wasn’t alone in thinking this woman was mad as cow shit.

“Gwenllian,” Adam said politely. His elegant fingers pressed against the edges of a paper that sat on the table before him, smoothing it out. 

“Yesss, little dog-boy?” She crooned. 

“Dog boy?” 

“You remind me of a dog I had as a girl. I never liked him very much. I often kicked him out of my way.” 

The skin around Adam’s eyes tightened, but he didn’t openly acknowledge that the comment bothered him. “We want to know--” 

“Why I’m here?” She interrupted. “I’m here because I stabbed him, of course.  _ A knife, a knife, a knife, he should have been afraid of my sharpened knife _ !” She broke off her song in a series of cackles. 

Ronan grit his teeth and sat up in his chair, blue eyes narrowed. “ _ Enough _ of your games. We don’t give a shit why you’re in here. We want to know about Owen Glendower.”

“Oooh, did I strike a nerve? You don’t like knives? Neither did he!” She cackled again and pulled at her jumpsuit, like it was choking her. “You want to know about daddy dearest? As do I!” 

“You didn’t know your father?” Adam asked. A crease formed between his brow as he frowned. 

“My father was a married man,” she said. She inspected her fingernails, scraping some sort of grime from beneath them. “Alas, my mother was not.” 

_ Alas _ ? Who the fuck said that? It was the twenty-first century for God’s sake. 

“So, you didn’t know your father at all?” Adam pressed. 

“Oh we knew each other. He never was a fan of mine and then I killed his friend!  _ His blood was hot and red on my hands, red on my hands, and I learned he was an ordinary man _ . You’re all the same, you see.” 

“Anatomically?” Ronan asked smartly. 

“Yes, yes. On the  _ inside _ . You all bleed red!” 

His lip curled up in a sneer at her. 

“So you have no idea about your father’s whereabouts?” Adam asked. There was an underlying tone in his voice that told Ronan he was getting fed up with the singing, the manic laughter, and the crazy. 

“I’m afraid I do not. If I did, he’d be just as dead as all of those deep in the ground!” 

“No further questions.” He collected his folders and stood. 

Ronan was right behind him, ready to live this crazy woman behind. 

The sun was hot as it beat down on the asphalt of the parking lot. Ronan untied his tie, unbuttoning a few of his buttons and rolling up his sleeves. “That was a lot of useless information.”

“She’s insane. I’m glad she’s put away so she can’t hurt anybody else.” Adam said. 

“Yeah, well when Declan demands to know why we weren’t productive today I’ll tell him it was your idea to waste an entire day with a nut-job.”

“Thanks.” 

Ronan unlocked the car and slid behind the wheel. The leather seats burned his back. It stung a little, but it was a good burn.

They pulled out onto the highway and Ronan shifted through gears much faster than the speed limit allowed. 

He was annoyed that their search for Glendower had been inhibited by his psychopathic daughter. He was annoyed that it had been Parrish’s idea and annoyed that it had led them virtually nowhere. 

“You’re going to get a speeding ticket,” Adam drawled from the passenger seat. His hand gripped the handle above the door as Ronan swerved in and out of traffic.

“Thanks  _ mom _ ,” he snarled. “I better make it a good one then, huh?” 

Adam scowled at him and sat back in the seat. He must have realized that his partner had no intentions of slowing down.

They listened to Ronan’s obscure music play lowly on the radio for several miles. 

“What made you want to be a cop?” Adam finally asked once the tension of the moment had seemed to pass. 

Ronan could see the blood, Niall’s body, the crowbar… He swallowed, knuckles turning white as he gripped the steering wheel with one hand and the gearshift with the other. “My father was murdered when I was kid,” he finally said. “They never caught his killer. You?”

Adam was silent, clearly uncertain as to whether or not he should offer up an apology about Niall Lynch’s tragic passing. He glanced at Ronan before he stared out the windshield again. He must have decided not to say anything because he said, “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I just wanted the hell out of my hometown. One of my college professors suggested it to me and I ran with it.”

“It was worse than Henrietta?” Ronan asked, a dark brow raised as he watched Adam out of the corner of his eye.

He closed his eyes, seeming to deflate with the question. His left hand raised and brushed against his left ear absently. “It was worse.” 

“Sounds pretty shitty if you ask me.” 

Adam gave him a look that said, ‘ _ I didn’t ask you _ ’. 

The dark brow raised even higher. 

“It was pretty shitty.” He paused, seeming to carefully taste his next question in his mouth before he asked it. “Your dad...did you two get along?” 

Ronan felt the familiar pang in his chest, that ache that never seemed to quite go away. “We got along great. My mom used to say we were cut from the same cloth.” He changed lanes again and pressed his foot down on the accelerator even harder.

The BMW’s engine let out a mighty roar and shot past the line of traffic ahead of him. When Ronan changed lanes again, he didn’t bother to slow down.

Adam nodded. 

“Did you?” 

This question seemed to startle him. His dirty-blond eyebrows shot skyward. He cocked his head toward Ronan so he was practically facing him. “Did I what?” 

“Get along with your dad?”

His eyebrows came back down and then furrowed. “Oh...no. The only time we ever got along was if I was bringing him another beer.” 

Something about that confession struck a chord inside Ronan. Adam had grown up with a shitty father and that revelation made him simmer. He and Adam didn’t necessarily get along, but that didn’t mean he didn’t deserve a good father. 

He guided the Beamer off of the interstate and onto the road into Henrietta. 

At the stop light, a white Evo pulled up. The engine snarled a challenge.

Behind the wheel sat Joseph Kavinsky. His white sunglasses hid his eyes, but the brow cocked over the frames posed a simple question,  _ are you going to be a pussy _ ?

Ronan revved the engine in response. 

The car snarled beneath the hood, mimicking his feelings. He was angry, hot, and wanted to be unleashed. 

“Are you really going to race him?” Adam asked. 

“Why the fuck not?”

“He’s driving a car with twice as much horsepower as you and it’s lighter. You don’t stand a chance.” 

In response, Ronan reached forward and flicked off the air conditioner. He glanced over at Kavinsky and extended his middle finger. 

“Maybe later, Lynch!” He called back through the open window. 

Ronan smirked. 

He and Kavinsky went back. In college the two of them had made unquestionably bad decisions together and had spent more than enough time in each other’s company to know what the other was like. 

The opposing light turned yellow. 

He revved up the engine. 

It turned red. 

His hand tightened on the gear shift, his foot lifting off the clutch ever so slightly. 

The light turned green.

Ronan mashed the gas pedal to the floor and let off the clutch. Tires squealed beneath him and out of the corner of his eye he saw the white Mitsubishi pull ahead. 

“I told you you couldn’t beat him!” Adam exclaimed. 

Ronan didn’t say anything, He knew his car and he knew what a shitty driver Kavinsky was. He slammed the car into third gear.

Then, just like he knew he would, Joseph Kavinsky fucked up the gear between third and fourth. 

The BMW sailed by him. 

“He’s a shitty driver,” Ronan called as they sped down the road. 

“I’d say,” Adam replied. His blue eyes were bright and alive. 

Ronan like a tiger that had been let out of his cage. He felt free.

* * *

 

When they got back to the station Ronan reviewed evidence from the crime scene while typed on the computer at a desk across the aisle. 

He felt restless. 

The race with Kavinsky had gotten the blood pumping through his veins, a fire lit within in his heart. 

He kept looking at the clock that hung above the door, counting down the minutes until quitting time. 

“Czerny,” Gansey said from his desk, “What do you have?” 

Noah appeared, he looked much more put together than he had the other night at the crime scene and he looked more professional than he had at Nino’s. The fancy lab coat he wore probably had something to do with it. 

Noah set a stack of manilla folders on Gansey’s desk. “So, three lacerations on the right wrist, four on the left. A ‘G’ was carved into the chest. Ligature marks were around the wrists, but not as much so for the ankles and knees. It makes me think they were done after death.” 

Gansey nodded, rubbing his bottom lip with his thumb. He reached out and popped open the top folder. “As for Glendower?” 

“That’s for you to decide.” Noah turned to leave, but he stopped at Ronan’s desk to play with the silver model car he had gotten him for his birthday. 

“I raced Kavinsky on the way back,” Ronan informed the blond. 

Noah, grinned. His blue eyes lit up with excitement. He was always a good passenger to have when Ronan wanted to race. He often egged him on, whooping and hollering. It was a wild side to Noah that was often subdued in this fucking office.

Ronan knew how he felt. 

“What happened?” He asked quietly so the others wouldn’t here.

He smirked, “I kicked his fucking ass.” 

“Yes!” Noah crowed before reaching out and smack Ronan’s palm with his own in a high-five. “He’s such a shitty driver, which is too bad because his car--” 

“What if it isn’t Glendower at all,” Adam said. The words were quiet, but the way he said them stopped Noah mid-sentence.

Gansey peered up at him from behind his wireframe glasses, a small frown on his lips. “Why is that?” 

Adam pulled out a few photographs dated from ten years ago. “In this picture here,” he pointed to the first one, “the edges of the ‘G’ are clean and smooth. In our murder they’re jagged, uneven, and appear to be hastily done. Plus,” he held up another photograph of the bound knees and ankles of a victim from nearly a decade ago. “They knots are tied differently. Glendower’s kills are consistent for  _ years _ .” 

Gansey moved from his desk and studied the photographs over Adam’s shoulder. He nodded subtly, like, he was agreeing with him. “Parrish, you’re a genius. If this isn’t Glendower we need to find out who it is.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lynchsparrrish is awesome! Follow her on tumblr for the awesome Pynch feels!
> 
> Also, I'd like to thank everyone who has read thus far! I'd like to give a little extra love to noorasdandekar who left a comment on the last chapter. You're wonderful!

_ “Jesus Christ, Lynch! _ ” Gansey’s voice shouted, snapping Ronan out of a deep sleep. “Control your damn bird!”

Ronan jerked awake upon hearing the total indignation in his best friend’s voice and Chainsaw’s angry squawking as she flapped about Gansey and Adam’s faces. 

“ _ Chainsaw _ !” Ronan barked.

She flapped to his dresser and eyed him reproachfully. She didn’t get scolded often and she clearly wasn’t a fan. 

“Who needs a watchdog when you’ve got a raven?” He asked them with a sly smile. 

Ronan and Adam locked eyes before they both looked away. 

Knowing that his coworker was seeing him half-naked in bed sent a ripple of fire through his chest. It was an oddly satisfying, yet annoying, feeling. 

“Get out of bed, Ronan,” Gansey’s said. His hair was messy, he had a black feather clinging to his sweater, but his eyes were bright and wild behind his wireframe glasses. “We got an anonymous tip on Glendower’s whereabouts. We’re leaving in five minutes whether you’re dressed or not.” 

_ Ah _ , that explained the gleam in Gansey’s eyes. 

Ronan didn’t ask questions, nor did he argue. He threw the covers back and pulled on a pair of jeans and fished through his drawer for a black v-neck. He tugged it on, feeling Adam’s eyes burning holes into his back the entire time. 

His tattoo was definitely eye-catching, but Gansey had seen it enough times that he knew it wasn’t him. He fastened his gun to his belt, stuck Chainsaw in her cage (much to her resentment), and jammed his feet in his boots. “Let’s go find us a killer.” 

* * *

 

“You’re sure this is it?” Ronan asked as he eyed mouth of the cave dubiously. 

Gansey looked at the coordinates of his GPS and then the cave again. “Yes, I’m certain this is where the anonymous tip told us to go. The coordinates match up precisely.” 

A few guys from the department milled around the mouth of the cave. None of them seemed too keen on plunging headlong into the cave. 

There was a bag full of equipment sitting in the fallen leaves. Ronan and Adam began to pull it on.  It consisted of harnesses, ropes, helmets, and flashlights. The harnesses were difficult to fasten over their kevlar vests. “Can you hand me that strap?” Ronan asked, turning his back to Adam.

When Adam handed him the strap they fingers brushed as Ronan fumbled to keep it from slipping from his hand.

Even after he fastened the strap, his fingers burned with the memory. 

“Noah, are you coming in?” Gansey asked as he clicked on his flashlight and pulled his glock out of its holster. 

Noah had been milling around the entrance watching them get ready. He shook his head when Gansey called to him. “No way! I’m claustrophobic. I can’t go in there. What if the walls come crumbling down?” 

“Chicken shit,” Ronan sneered as he clicked his maglight on. 

Gansey looked between his friends. He seemed to be one part uncertain, two parts ecstatic. “ _ Excelsior _ ,” he said before he led the three of them into the cave.

It was dark, the beam of their lights only went so far ahead of them until the darkness swallowed it up. The floor of the cave was slippery and damp. More than once, one of them almost went down. The temperature inside was considerably colder than it was in the muggy summer air above. 

“This place creeps me out,” Adam said as the beam of his light swept over the walls of the cave walls. It was growing narrower, but it appeared to widen out again ahead. “It feels like we’re being watched.” 

“It’s all in your head,” Ronan told him. He would never admit it out loud, but he knew exactly what Adam meant. The trickle of water down the cave walls made it seem like there was another entity in the cave with them, that the cave itself was alive. “What would Glendower be doing in a shithole like this, anyway?” 

Gansey put a hand up to silence him. 

He was right. If Glendower was hiding in here there was a chance he would hear them. Ronan exhaled sharply through his nose, but said nothing.

_ How deep does this thing go _ ? He wondered silently to himself. 

They’d been wandering in the depths of the cave for twenty minutes. Maybe sixty. Maybe five. Time seemed to be a nonexistent construct in this cave. 

Ronan breathed out a string of curses as an icy drop of water dripped down the back of his neck. It sent a shiver through him.

Adam gave him a sharp look.

Ronan flipped him the bird. 

They trudged on. The floor of the cave began to slope downward at an extreme angle. It was difficult to walk down it without slipping. The three of them slipped and scrambled as they picked their way down the slime-coated floor. 

Gansey was in the lead, his flashlight guiding the way ahead of them. Then, it vanished. 

“Gansey?” Adam and Ronan called out at the same time. 

Adam slipped and almost fell on his ass, but Ronan lunged forward and wrapped his arms around his waist to keep him from falling too. “Gansey?” He grunted as Adam got his footing again. “Where the fuck did you go?!” 

There was a terrifying silence for several breaths. 

Ronan’s mind was racing. Gansey was allergic to bees. What if there was a nest of hornets lurking around in here? What if Glendower really was hiding in the cave and he managed to stab Gansey in the few anxiety-stretched seconds it had been since the light vanished.

Suddenly, a light appeared ahead. “I dropped my flashlight when I fell,” Gansey’s voice echoed eerily through the tunnel. “I’m alright.  Just be careful when you two come down. It’s almost a ninety degree angle.”

Relief flooded through him, a raging fire overtaking the frozen chill the fear had left in his veins. Ronan exhaled a breath, “you bastard.” 

The drop down into the rest of the tunnel was quite steep and slippery. Ronan hardly managed to stay upright, but he joined Gansey at the bottom of the shallow pit. He shined his flashlight around the area. “Is this it?” 

“This is the end of the tunnel,” Gansey said. 

There was a grunt and a soft curse as Adam joined them in the shallow pit. He nearly stumbled at the bottom, almost smashing his elegant cheekbones against one of the rough rocks at the entrance. 

Ronan reached out and steadied him. “Be careful, Parrish. Damn.”

“Sorry,” he muttered as he pushed his helmet out of his eyes so he could look around the cave with his maglite. “It’s a dead end.” 

“Yes,” there a tightness in Gansey’s voice. 

“Do you think it was a hoax?” Ronan asked as he moved around the edges of the small cavern. He swept the light along the slimy walls of the cave. There were no crawl spaces, no places to be ambushed from, and no way out except for the way they came in.

Gansey said nothing at first. He was assessing his feelings, rationalizing his thoughts. He stopped in front of an outcropping of rock. This strip was three feet off the ground and not solid like the rest of the cavern. It was a mishmash of different shaped stones and rocks jammed against each other in a way that said it was man made. His voice was matter-of-fact, “coincidence.” 

It wasn’t a coincidence and Ronan knew just as well as Adam that Gansey didn’t believe in them. 

Adam crouched down so the piled rocks were eye-level. He peered between the cracks as best as he could. “I think there’s something back there.” 

“Ronan,” Gansey said, “will you do the honors?” 

Ronan smirked and cracked his neck. He reached out and grabbed one of the stones toward the top. It was rough and uneven against his palm. It was worlds different than the feel of the rest of the cave, which reminded him of a dead fish. He committed the feeling to memory before he looked at Adam, “unless you want to wear one of these rocks as a helmet accessory, I suggest you get out of the way.” 

Adam looked up at him coolly before he stood up and backed away from the wall. He stood next to Gansey, they were wearing matching expressions of curiosity. 

It took some prying, but Ronan managed to dislodge one of the rocks. He studied it before he tossed it aside. “I hope that wasn’t a support to this damn cavern.” The last thing he wanted was for the entire cave to come crashing down on his head.

Tearing the wall down was sweaty, dusty, and tedious work. At the end of it all, Ronan coughed and tossed the last stone into a pile. He waved his hand in front of his face and tried to let the dust settle. 

The three of them pressed closer to the small outlet in the cave wall. It was roughly four feet deep and nine feet wide. It was only three feet tall. It was just big enough for a person to lay in it. 

And lying in it, someone was.

“Fuck,” Ronan swore.

The person was lying face down, his hands were bound behind his back, his wrists were slashed open. His legs were tied at both the knees and the ankles.

“Here’s your murderer, Gansey.” 

Gansey shook his head, “we don’t know that for sure. We won’t know until we turn him over.” 

Adam shared a skeptical look with Ronan, but he pulled on a pair of gloves anyway. 

His fine, freckled features wrinkled as he grabbed the body. “Rigor Mortis has already set in,” he noted. “Judging by the,” he paused to swallow and grimace. 

Ronan scowled. The scent of a decaying body was one that he would certainly never get used to and it was one that he would never forget.

Adam continued, “judging by the smell and the state of the body he’s been down here for several days. Perhaps even a week.” 

“Where is the blood?” Gansey asked, braving the smell to lean in closer. “His wrists are slashed in typical Glendower fashion. Where is the blood?”

“The body was moved here,” Adam said. “There’s no visible blood here.” He reached up with a gloved hand and turned the body over. “In true Glendower fashion, there’s a ‘G’ carved into his chest.” 

His coworkers said nothing. 

Ronan knew that face the man was wearing. He’d seen this man’s face enough over the past few years that he  _ knew _ this man. 

“And in true Glendower fashion,” Gansey said, “he’s wearing Glendower’s face.” 

“ _ What _ ?” Adam asked in disbelief. 

The man’s features were hard to work with. Death was not becoming of anyone. The flesh on his face was bloated and decaying. Part of his upper lip was eaten away by flies, revealing a ghoulish grimaces. Still, the sharp point of his nose, the jutting brow bone, and the scar on his eyebrow were all very defining features of Owen Glendower.

Ronan kept stealing glances as Gansey. Obviously, this was not the way his best friend had envisioned finding the most notorious serial killer the United States had ever seen. Clearly, he’d expected a living, breathing, Owen Glendower. “Gansey?”

Gansey’s face was hard to read as he stared at the body. 

“Gramps?” 

“This,” Gansey said slowly. His voice was mottled with disappointment. “This isn’t how I pictured it.” 

“I know.” 

“Do you realize what this is?” He asked them as he moved aside so Adam could climb out of where the body was being kept. “This is it!” He exclaimed. His eyes were bright, his cheeks were flushed with excitement. “I have spent  _ years _ looking for Glendower and we finally found him! We finally found him!” 

Ronan raised a brow at him. This was not the reaction he’d expect from the man who had spent over a decade looking for Glendower. 

“ _ Ronan _ !” Gansey exclaimed clapping him hard on the back. “We have finally done it! We’ve found him!” He picked up his radio and called for a team to come in to retrieve the body. 

Adam looked at the two of them, disbelief on his face.

“Parrish! We have finally found Glendower!” 

He licked his chapped lips and in the dim light of the flashlight, Adam looked tired. He gave Gansey a smile and tapped his fist with his own. “I’m happy for you, man.” He paused, looking at the body before returning his attention to his coworkers. “But you know what this means right?” 

Ronan felt the impact Gansey’s contagious elation darken. 

“If Glendower is dead...who killed him?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I got a job and I'll be moving soon so as a celebration I decided to post two chapters this week!
> 
> I'd like to put a disclaimer up, saying I don't know anything about the foster system! It's mentioned in this chapter. Also, I wrote Chapter Nine last night and it's like being on the titanic of feels. 
> 
> Thanks again to the wonderful lynchesparrrish on tumblr! Also, to everyone who has liked/commented/subscribed, you give me life! Seriously, the comments and the love keep me writing and they help boost my confidence. I love you all!

“I can’t believe your brother let you install red and blue lights in this car,” Adam said. His knuckles were bone-white as he gripped the handle on the passenger side door. Yet, he didn’t close his eyes as Ronan took a sharp curve at over one hundred miles per hour. 

Ronan gave his passenger a sly look, “he didn’t.” 

“How are you getting away with having them?” 

The truth was Declan’s precise words had been, “I forbid it” when Ronan had asked about getting the lights put in the beemer. Ronan had done it anyway and now there was nothing Declan could do about it. That fact was a small (but smug) victory. 

Ronan shrugged in response and downshifted as he entered a rather inhabited part of town.

It wasn’t the best area. In fact, it was well known for its drug deals and domestic dispute calls. The houses were in fair shape at best, the businesses weren’t much better unless it was the one chain gas station that sold the cheapest cigarettes in town. It was unsurprising that a body would turn up here. 

However, as unsurprised as Ronan was, the neighborhood was twice as curious. People crowded on the nearby sidewalks, gawking past the police tape. They exchanged looks with each other, murmured behind hands, and stood on their tiptoes to see past the cars.

It was disgusting.

Ronan whipped the car into a spot next to Gansey’s bright orange Camaro and flicked off the lights. He slammed the door once because he was ready to get out and twice because he liked the loudness of it. It was as loud as his heart felt. 

As usual, Noah greeted them at the top of the rickety front steps. His blue eyes were wide as they approached. 

Ronan said, “let me guess, it’s bad.” 

Noah nodded. “It’s like Glendower,” he added, “but this time it’s different.” 

Adam eyed Ronan. His expression asked,  _ different how _ ? 

Ronan’s look asked,  _ how the fuck would I know _ ?

They entered the hall. It was full of shoes. There were a pair of men’s sneakers and a pair of well-worn work boots accompanied by half a dozen pairs of shoes that made Ronan think that a little girl lived here. 

He swallowed,  _ please God...not a kid. _

There had only been one case where it had been a kid. The toddler had been drowned in the bathtub by a psychotic babysitter. That had fucked Ronan up for weeks. Even thinking about it made his body pulse with volatile rage. 

“It’s not the girl,” Noah said as he followed them in. He had been there when they’d worked the case with the child. He knew how hard it had been on Ronan. 

Relieved by this news, he stepped over the shoes and thundered up the stairs to join his co workers.

Gansey was waiting for them, his brow creased. He said nothing as they approached. Instead, he simply moved aside so Adam could work. 

It was gruesome. 

There was blood  _ everywhere _ . The body was face down, like the others. It was bound, like the others. 

However, there was an awful headwound. The nightstand a mere foot from the body was covered in blood and hair. 

“Multiple wrist lacerations,” Adam called out. “There’s an obvious head wound. Although, it’s hard to tell which was the cause of death.”

Beside him, Ronan heard Noah exhale a shaky breath. His already pale features had paled even further, leaving him with a ghostly complexion. 

“Are you okay, Czerny?” 

“I’m going to be sick,” Noah breathed before turning and dashing out of the room. The stairs squeaked in protest beneath his heavy footsteps.

Ronan said nothing. 

Seeing the bloody mess of the victim’s head reminded him of finding his own father’s body in the dirt of the driveway. He curled his fingers into a fist and resisted the urge to smash something. 

Adam looked to where Noah had fled the room and was silent. He sighed and then turned his attention back to the body. As he explained his findings, his gloved fingers were gently where they brushed the skin, his head was cocked slightly to listen to Gansey’s questions and comments, his blue eyes were sharp and attentive, his lips were parted slightly in the parts where they were silent. 

Ronan could hear his heart in his ears. 

Adam looked up at Ronan. 

Ronan stared back as he pretended like his palms weren’t sweating. 

Adam looked away. 

Ronan stuffed his hands in his pockets and frowned. Who had found the body? Most corpses had a particular look and smell after a certain amount of time. This one had neither, which led him to believe it was fairly new. 

“Flip him over,” Gansey said. He was squinting at something up by the victim’s head. His thumb brushed his lip thoughtfully. 

Adam obliged. 

For several seconds nobody said a word. 

“Is that a rose?” Gansey finally asked. 

It was indeed a rose. The flower had been placed between the victim’s broken teeth.

“That’s...different,” Adam supplied. 

“But everything else is the same.” 

He inspected the “G” carved into the chest of the victim and nodded. The pieces of his hair that stuck up bounced slightly as he did. “So...why just change that? They know we know they’re not Glendower. It’s been all over the news for the past week. So, why are they still mimicking his style?” 

None of them had an answer for that. 

Adam continued to study the body, a knot between his brows. “It’s a fairly fresh kill.” 

Ronan raised a brow. It brought back his previous thoughts about who discovered the body. Whoever it was probably hadn’t gotten very far. He was sure Cheng was interrogating them somewhere. “Who called about the body?” 

Gansey appeared to age ten years at the question. He licked his lips before he said, “the victim’s sister.” 

The shoes, he realized. The shoes had belonged to a young girl. She was probably scared and distraught. 

Ronan could remember feeling numb and in shock for hours after finding his father dead in the driveway. He hadn’t said anything to anybody for nearly three days until his mother had her stroke and she was sent to the nursing home. That was when Ronan had snapped. He’d shattered a mirror, a picture frame, and several items in his bedroom. He screamed and cried until his throat had been raw and his voice had been hoarse.

Back then, he and Declan had got along just fine. His older brother had sat with him until he’d fallen asleep. It hadn’t been until their mother had passed away and they’d been forbidden to go to the Barns that friction occurred between the two oldest Lynch brothers.

Without another word, Ronan moved past them and down the stairs. 

“Ronan!” Adam called, startled. 

“Let him go,” Gansey told him quietly. He knew how close to home this was for his best friend. 

Ronan thundered down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom and heard a sniff come the kitchen. He followed the sound.

The young girl was sitting at a small kitchen table among stacks of old mail and wrinkled papers. Her blonde hair was cut short to her head, she wore a too-large tattered white beanie. When she looked up at him, her large eyes were filled with tears. Her nose was red from crying. 

He sat down across from her, trying not to look at the mess in the kitchen. There sink was overflowing with dirty dishes, many of them sat on the counter. Crumbs littered the countertops and the floor. There were scratches on the surface of the tiny tabletop. A chipped coffee mug sat inches from Ronan’s elbow. He took care to not knock it to the floor. 

“I’m detective Ronan Lynch,” he said quietly. His voice was the loudest thing in the room. “What’s your name?” 

“Opal,” she replied with a sniff. She wiped her eyes with her dirty sleeve, a gesture that made him realize just how young she was.

“I’m sorry about your brother.” 

She just stared at a scratch by his hand, saying nothing. His apology didn’t mean didn’t mean anything to her. It was just what people said out of courtesy. 

Ronan had felt the same way when his parents died. 

“What happened?” 

Her eyes welled up with tears again as she started to tell her tale. She told him how she had come home from a friend’s house to find the lights on like her brother was home. She couldn’t find him. So she went upstairs to look for him and she’d found him dead. She paused in her tale only long enough to accept a few napkins from Ronan so she could wipe her eyes and blow her nose. 

There was nothing he could do but nod sympathetically. Cheng had already taken this information, he was sure. 

“Do you have somebody coming to get you? Your mom and dad? Your grandparents?” 

The girl shook her head miserably. 

“There’s nobody?” 

“No. My brother was guardian because my mom overdosed when I was six and my dad is in jail.” 

Ronan swore softly under his breath. He leaned back in the wooden chair, it groaned beneath him. She had nobody. Her brother had been her guardian and now he was dead. She was alone and was doomed to go into the system. 

Kids who went into the system had it rough. It was rarely a good thing. 

She was so much like him that it hurt. 

He couldn’t let her go into some stranger’s home that used her for a monthly check and didn’t give a damn what happened to her once she turned eighteen. 

“Some guy said some lady is going to pick me up tonight and take me to a foster home,” Opal said. 

“No,” Ronan replied quickly. He stood up. “You’re not going into the fucking system. You’re coming home with me. I’ll keep you in school, I’ll take you to your friends, and you’ll have your own room.” 

She eyed him skeptically, “are you serious?” 

“I’m dead serious. C’mon, kid.”

“How do I know you’re not a serial killer?” 

“I’m in the business of finding bodies not making them.” 

She stared up at him, assessing him. Then, she grabbed her pink backpack and pulled it on over her shoulders. “Okay,” she said, “but school doesn’t start for a few more weeks.”

Ronan guided her to the front door. What he was doing was super against the law. Technically, it couldn’t be considered kidnapping (couldn’t it?). He didn’t care about that. He couldn’t let Opal go to a shitty foster home. He would handle the paperwork during the week. 

Adam was leaning on railing on the front porch when they stepped out. A moth flitted around his head. He looked exhausted. He looked up as they approached. “Where are you guys going?” 

“My place,” Ronan replied. He didn’t need anybody asking too many questions. 

“You know you can’t just take a kid, right?” 

Ronan leaned in close. He could smell Adam’s deodorant. “She can’t go into the system. She needs somebody who actually cares about her.” 

“And when the social worker asks where she went?” 

“She has an aunt that came and got her or something.” 

Adam nodded a little. 

“You didn’t see us leave.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

This answer satisfied Ronan. He straightened up and stepped back, but not before he gave Adam a solid clap on the shoulder. He gave his partner a sharp smile. “You know something? You’re not so bad, Parrish.” 

Adam gave him a dry smile, “neither are you, Lynch.” 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the love I received last chapter! It means a lot to me! 
> 
> Once again, a special thanks goes out to lynchesparrrish on tumblr! 
> 
> This chapter isn't my favorite, but that means we're one step closer to solving the mystery!

The next morning Ronan took Opal to her friend’s house and went to work. He stopped on the way to get a couple cups of coffee. There was a lot of evidence to go over. Who would have known that a simple flower between the teeth of a victim would spark days of work? 

It was going to suck.

He parked the BMW beside the Pig and headed inside. 

When he arrived, Gansey and Adam were both there. The two of them seemed to be completely fixated on whatever tasks they had on hand.

He leaned against Adam’s desk and looked down as the blond’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “You’re ever diligent, Parrish.”

“And you’re ever late, Lynch.” 

Ronan grinned at him and set the extra cup of coffee on Adam’s desk. “ _ Touche _ . But between us, I’m late because the dumbass at the coffee shop doesn’t know how to work the cash register.”

This made Adam stop. His fingers quit their assault on the keyboard and he eyed the cardboard cup of coffee dubiously, like it was going to bite him. He picked it up and looked at it. His eyes flicked to Ronan uncertainly.

“Just drink it, man.”

He must have deemed it safe and not a prank because he took a hefty drink. “Thanks.” 

Adam was always thanking him for doing shit for him. If he grabbed the copies off the printer, if he picked him up on the way to work, or if he picked up the bill at Nino’s it was always “thanks”. 

“Shut up,” Ronan replied flippantly. 

He shoved off the desk, stuffing his free hand into his pocket and moved to his desk. He dropped into his chair with a sigh. 

He hated working in the office. He felt like these four walls trapped him in. He was a tiger trapped in a cage. He was cut out more for physical work, If he wanted to be a desk jockey, he would have gone to school for accounting or some shit. 

There was a massive pile of paperwork sitting on his desk that instantly soured his mood. He hardly had done his homework in school and it was completely unfair that he had to do homework here, too.

With a few muttered curses, he picked up a pen and started to fill out a stack of paperwork the size of the dictionary. 

He was only a quarter of the way through stack when Noah’s voice appeared at his elbow, “that looks like it sucks.” 

“Christ, Noah!” Ronan exclaimed, whirling to glare at the other man. “Give a guy some warning, would ya? That’s creepy as hell.”

“Sorry,”  he replied as he snagged a vacant chair and pulled it up to Ronan’s desk. He tipped back and put his feet up on the corner of it. 

“Don’t you have a body to examine and shit?”

“Don’t you have paperwork to do?” 

Ronan snorted in a way that told Noah if there was any sort of distraction he’d rather mess around than do his work. 

Noah already know that. He crumpled up a piece of blank paper into a ball. “Do you think I can get it into Gansey’s wastebasket?” He asked.

“It’s on the other side of his desk. Do you think you can?” 

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I bet you can’t.” 

His words were a not only a challenge, but an excuse to keep his brain from melting. Ronan grinned and crumpled up another piece of paper and tossed it. True to Noah’s bet, he missed. He crumpled another piece and another. 

Gansey didn’t seem to notice. More likely, he expected this kind of behavior and didn’t care. 

“Do you think that head injury was post-mortem?” Adam asked, turning around to look at Noah. His blue eyes watched as Ronan threw another crumpled up piece of paper, this time landing it successfully in the trash can. 

“No,” he replied as he took his turn. He shook his fist as he watched it bounce off the edge. Once he settled back in his chair he looked at Adam, “I think that he hit it during a struggle. Maybe after his wrists were slashed. It bled a lot. That’s what you think, don’t you? That it was the cause of death?” 

He nodded, “it had been a nasty blow to the head.” 

Noah frowned and stopped throwing another paper basketball. His fingers traced the spot where the head injury had been on the victim. “Head injuries are the worst.” 

After finding Niall with his head bashed in, Ronan couldn’t disagree. 

Adam didn’t reply to that either. Instead, he turned around and got to work again. 

After a few minutes of sobering silence, Noah ripped off a small piece of paper and rolled it into a ball. He gently tossed it and it bounced off of Adam’s head. He repeated the motion again. This time the tiny piece of paper stuck in his dusty hair. 

Ronan grinned and followed suit. 

By the time Adam caught on each of them had gotten six pieces of paper stuck in his hair. He scrubbed a hand through his combed hair, messing it up. He turned around and gave each of them a sharp look. “Don’t you two have anything better to do?” 

Ronan shrugged, “That’s what I have you two for, Parrish.”

He narrowed his eyes at him, “cute.” 

Noah flung a rubber band and it hit squarely in the middle of Gansey’s computer screen. He chuckled and snorted as Gansey turned around. Finally, he offered up, “It was Ronan.” 

“Fuck you, Czerny!” Ronan snapped. 

Gansey’s look said that he was tired of the two of them messing around. He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Noah, go get me your final autopsy reports. Ronan, for God’s sake, quit fucking around.” 

Ronan made a face. Swearing didn’t sound natural coming from Gansey’s honeyed Virginian accent. “Christ, Gramps. Don’t swear. It sounds so fucking unnatural.”

Noah reluctantly slid from the chair. He shrugged on his lab coat and gave them a wave before slipping out of the office and vanishing down to the lab. 

Gansey levelled Ronan with a stern gaze the same way a professor or a fed-up parent would. He pointed to Ronan’s desk. “Finish filling that out and get it to me so I can send it in. Got it?” 

He said nothing in response. Instead he heaved his boots off of his desktop and got back to filling out paperwork. 

He was almost finished with the stack when the door to Declan’s office swung open. It smacked against the wall with a bang impressive enough that Ronan couldn’t help but appreciate it. 

Everybody twisted around in their seats to look at the head of their department. 

Declan’s gaze was fixed on Ronan, his blue eyes were hard and his jaw was tight. His glare could set fire to the stormiest of seas. “ _ You _ ,” he snarled as he pointed at his brother. “Get in my office  _ now _ .” 

Ronan bristled, his own jaw set. 

“I’m not fucking around today, Ronan.  _ Now _ !”

He stood up and folded his arms over his chest stubbornly. Adam, Gansey, and Cheng all turned their attention to their computers. The tension in the air was thick enough to stand on. 

Ronan brushed past his brother, their shoulders knocking. The threw himself into a chair on the opposite side of Declan’s desk hard enough that the legs squealed against the tiled floor. He folded his arms across his chest once more and put his feet on the desk in a final act of defiance. 

Declan shut the door to his office and stood behind desk opposite of Ronan. His fingers splayed against the monthly calendar that took up a good portion of his workspace. “What happened last night?” 

Ronan knew this was about Opal. He  _ knew _ this was going to come back and bite him in the ass. He raised a brow at his brother and shrugged. “We found a body. We picked it up and now we’re working a case.” 

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Sometimes silence was the best answer and that was the response he was giving Declan now. He said nothing and he stared at the scuffed toes of his boots. He knew when his mouth would get him into more trouble than he was already in. 

Like his brother, Declan knew when silence worked best. Sometimes, it was the best choice to get him the answer he was looking for. 

Neither of the Lynch brothers said a word. 

It was a game both of them were good at. However, Ronan was a better player. 

Declan sighed and sat down in his chair, defeated. “Ronan,” he said, his voice leaving no room for insolence, “where is the girl? We thought maybe she ran away, but I know better than that. I know  _ you _ better than that.” 

“You don’t know anything about me,” Ronan snapped. He put his feet down and sat up, searing him with an electric gaze. 

“I know the girl is just like you, Ronan!” 

He was silent upon his exclamation. Opal was just like him? He contemplated this for a few silent breaths.

She had come home to find her brother dead. His head had been bashed in. She’d been alone. His death had clearly messed her up. She obviously had looked up to him the way Ronan had looked up to Niall. Once her brother was gone, she’d had nobody else. 

“I’m not a gambling man, but I were, I’d bet that she had stayed with you at the Barns last night.” 

Once again, Ronan felt that silence was the best response. 

It told Declan everything he needed to know. “Do you know what could happen to you if they found out she left the crime scene with you?” 

His question was met with silence. 

“ _ Years _ in prison, Ronan. Not months,  _ years _ . Technically this is kidnapping and you could lose everything!” His voice was steadily rising, his fair face getting redder by the second. “You could ruin this family’s name!” 

“This family’s name was already ruined!” Ronan snapped. “We all know what dad did. He was a thief, he was a gambler, and a liar. He made promises he couldn’t keep and it got him killed.” 

Something about this frustrated Declan. His knuckles tightened on the polished surface of his desk. “The girl--” 

“What?” He demanded. “Do you want me to put her in the system with people who don’t give a flying fuck about her?  Do you want to pick up her body and take it to the morgue someday?” 

“Yes! I want you to put her back into the system until you can legally claim guardianship over her, Ronan!” 

“Or what?” He snarled. 

Declan’s patience was gone. He roared, “Or you’re fired!” 

There was a deafening silence between the two of them.The shoe had dropped. Either Ronan sacrificed Opal to the shitty foster system or he lost his job and gave up everything he worked for. He’d gone to college for years (even though he despised school) to be able to do this job. He thought about his father’s death day after day, knowing that he’d be able to catch murderers like his. 

The oldest Lynch cocked an eyebrow, waiting for an answer.

Ronan unbuckled his belt and pulled off his gun. He pulled his badge out of his wallet. He slammed both of them down on Declan’s desk with an impossible bang. “Fuck you. I fucking quit.” He didn’t wait for a reaction, he threw open the office door and stormed out. 

Declan moved from behind his desk and stood in the doorway, chest heaving and face flushed as he watched his little brother move. 

“Ronan?” Gansey asked, obviously attuned to his best friend’s distress. He stood up and moved towards him. 

“Fuck this place,” Ronan growled. 

“Declan,” Gansey said approaching his supervisor, “surely there’s something that can be done. What if--” 

“Shut up, Dick!” Declan snapped. “You may be able to help Ronan with all of his problems, but you can’t help him with this. He’s going to have to learn how to handle things himself. Let him walk out of here. Sit down and get back to work.” 

Ronan slammed the door hard enough that the glass quivered. 

Noah had been returning to the office with a armful of papers. He saw Ronan’s stormy expression and moved toward him. “Ronan, what happened?” 

“Declan’s being a fucking prick.” 

“Oh.” 

“I quit.” 

“ _ Oh _ . Well...will we see you at Nino’s on Saturday, right?” 

“Yeah, fine. Whatever.” Ronan gripped the doorknob and yanked it open. “I’ll probably be there. Now fuck off, Czerny.” He slammed that door, too. Then he got in his car and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving nothing but black marks on the asphalt where his car had been.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm moving in less than a week (eek!) and in typical fashion, I haven't done anything to prepare. Thank you all so much for your kindness and love! A special thanks to lynchesparrrish on tumblr for being my TRC fangirl!

 

Ronan spent the next few days doing work around the Barns. He mended fences, put new shingles on a roof of one of the sheds, and fixed the squeaky step on the porch. 

“You’re miserable,” Opal said as she sat cross-legged in the grass a few feet away from where he was scrubbing out a watering tank. 

Ronan gave her a steely sideways look. “I’m not miserable,” he said as he got back to work. “I’m perfectly fucking happy.” 

She rolled her gray eyes at him and ran her thumbnail along the stem of a flower she’d picked. “Ever since you quit your job you’ve been stomping around the farm like it's done something wrong.” 

“I have not.” 

“Have too. You know what I think?” 

“What?” His patience was wearing thin. He didn’t really want to talk to her right now. 

“That the kitchen cupboards are going to fall right off of their hinges if you keep slamming them the way you do.” 

He gave her a sharp glare and went back to scrubbing the tank. 

“You’ve been in a pissy mood ever since you quit.” 

Ronan straightened up and glared at her. “First of all,  _ language _ . Secondly, I don’t give a shit about that place.” 

She wasn’t wrong, however. Even Ronan noticed the dark mood that had rolled in like a stormcloud the day he’d quit his job. It appeared that it was here to stay for a while at least.

She narrowed her eyes at him, undoubtedly scolding him for his language after he’d just chastised her for her own. 

What did she know? She was what, twelve or thirteen? She didn’t know anything about Ronan or how he felt about his job. He didn’t even tell her why he quit, although she was smart. She probably had it figured out the day he’d slid his beemer into the driveway and slammed the front door of the house, announcing his departure from his job. 

He turned his attention to the stock tank, scrubbing it with a renewed fervor. Honestly, it was probably clean enough that even Gansey would drink out of it, but he didn’t want to give up the physical action of scrubbing it. It was something for him to take his frustrations out on.

“I think you missed a spot,” Opal said. She had creeped up behind him and was peering into the hundred gallon tank behind him. 

He growled, “Opal…” 

“Jeez, you  _ are  _ being extra-brooding today.” 

Ronan swore and tossed the scrub brush down. “That’s it! Just go--” he hesitated, “go do your homework or something.” 

“School doesn’t start for two more weeks.” 

“Just go do  _ something _ .” 

She shrugged and turned back toward the house. “If you say so. Sorry I kept you company.” 

Ronan ground his teeth together. Declan was right. She was just like him, always having the last word and knowing how to leave it feeling like a gaping flesh wound. 

He turned the tank over and jammed the hose in it and turned the water on. He held out his arm and Chainsaw flew to it. She settled herself on his shoulder, black beak preening his hair. 

He hated not being at work. He hated that most of his chores were done by the middle of the day and the fact that he had nothing else to occupy his time. Ronan was not a creature that could simply do nothing unless he was sleeping. He always had to be working on something, banging on something, slamming something. 

He sighed and pushed open the gate and headed into the nearest barn. He looked around. If anybody saw it, they would have suspected Niall Lynch was a hoarder. Perhaps they weren’t wrong. 

Ronan stood among piles and piles of stuff wondering how in the hell his father had accumulated so much useless shit throughout the course of his life. He picked up some sort of metal device that looked like it was an ancient tooth puller or something. He tossed it aside. As long as he had nothing else to do, he may as well make this disorganized mess an organized one. 

It took him two hours to sort piles of junk into completely useless, could be useful, and ‘hey, I wondered where that went’. 

When he finished that task, he brought the cows in and gave them fresh bedding and hay. 

He was sweating bullets by the time he crossed the fields and headed back to the farm house. 

As he opened the gate he noticed a shitty car parked next to the BMW. It was three different colors, each  new color had been pulled from a completely different car. It wasn’t shitty by design. It was shitty by necessity. 

He frowned, wondering who it belonged to. He worried that it was a social worker (god, he hoped not. Not in that  _ thing _ .) here to take Opal away and arrest him. His brow was knotted as he rounded the front of the beemer and he stopped short when he saw a man sitting on the porch, in his mother’s rocking chair. 

“Parrish, what the fuck are you doing here?” His lips were curling into a smile as he spoke. 

Adam looked out of place in clothes that didn’t have buttons up the front or require a set of shining shoes to go with. Instead, he was lounging in the chair in a faded pair of jeans and a well-worn Coca-Cola t-shirt. 

“Is that your shitbox?” 

“Sorry some of us can’t afford a five-hundred dollar car payment every month,” he drawled. There was no acid in his words, just blatant truth. “We make good money, but not that kind of money, Lynch.” 

Ronan climbed onto the porch and paused, his hand on the door. “Do you want a beer?” 

He shook his head, “I don’t drink.” 

He shrugged and went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer for himself. When he came back out, Adam had moved from the chair to the steps of the porch. His blue eyes were combing over the fields and the outbuildings. 

Ronan sat beside him and popped the top of his beer. He took a long drink and followed Adam’s gaze. 

“Is this what you’ve been doing since you quit?” 

“Yep.” 

They were silent. Chainsaw moved from one side of Ronan’s shoulder to the other, eyeing the newcomer warily. 

Finally, Adam asked, “what happened, Ronan?” 

He picked a strand of hay from his tank and tossed it aside. He was covered in pieces of hay and flakes of sawdust. He didn’t really want to talk about what had happened in Declan’s office with Adam or anyone else. “Have you seen Opal?” 

There was no way the deflection had been missed by Adam. He was too smart and knew Ronan too well for that. “She poked her head outside and saw me and said she was going to her room.” 

“Hm.” 

They were sitting in silence again. He could feel Adam’s gaze prodding at him, poking him, trying to figure out why he quit his job. He was looking for answers. Ronan was reluctant to give them. 

“It’s because I took Opal without obtaining her through the foster system first,” he finally exhaled. He took another drink of beer. It was shockingly cool in comparison to the blistering hot day. “Declan told me it was either she go into the system or I lose my job. So, I quit.” 

Adam seemed to take this in and he nodded silently. 

“I’m going to get the paperwork, but that shit takes time.” 

Once again, he remained silent. His blue eyes looked at Ronan’s skin, where Chainsaw’s claws were digging into Ronan’s sunburn. “Where in the hell did you find a raven?” 

“I found her when she was a baby,” Ronan said. “I had to feed her every two hours and everything. God, was she ugly back then.” He watched Chainsaw out of the corner of his eye as Adam raised tentative finger to stroke her feathers. “She’s an asshole. Be careful.” 

True to his word, Chainsaw pecked at Adam’s fingers. 

“Ouch!” He recoiled, 

“Told you,” Ronan said. He studied the way the sun glinted off of Adam’s face, illuminating his freckles. He frowned, reaching out and pressing a fingertip to a spot below Adam’s eye. “Who’d you piss off, Parrish? Holy shit.” 

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Adam said. He dropped his arm down to his side and slid away from Ronan on the steps. 

That gap between them may as well have been a canyon. 

“I didn’t want to talk about why I quit my job either,” he argued, “but I did. Fair is fair, Parrish.” 

Adam gave him a look that told him to silently piss off. Still, when Ronan didn’t lower his gaze, he did. “I went to visit my mom,” Adam finally allowed. “My father...he’s a piece of shit. He was beating the shit out of her when I got there. I stepped in and he gave me this.” His long fingers gestured to the bruise under his eye. It was a few days old, by the looks of it. 

Ronan was completely still for approximately three heartbeats while he processed Adam’s words. Adam’s father was abusive. Adam’s father had beat his mother. Adam’s father had beat  _ him _ . It probably hadn’t started when Adam had grown up and gone to college. It had probably been something that he’d lived with his entire life. 

He shot to his feet, Chainsaw flapped indignantly to the back of the rocking chair. “Are you fucking serious?” He snarled. He clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. He wanted to hit something.  _ No _ , he wanted to find Robert Parrish and beat the fuck out of him. He wanted to make him pay for years and years of torment than Adam and his mother had suffered through. “That son of a bitch  _ hit _ you.” 

Adam didn’t move from where he was curled up on the front steps of the farm house. “It wasn’t the first time, Ronan.” 

This news infuriated him even further. He put together a colorful string of curses and kicked the tire to his car. “What the  _ fuck _ ?” He demanded, whipping around to face Adam. “Let’s find him. Let’s fucking find him and--” 

“ _ Ronan _ !” Adam barked, rising to his feet. “He’s getting what’s coming to him.” 

He stilled, looking at him. He could feel his heart starting to slow down and his blood slowly coming down from the boiling point it had risen to. 

“The other night was the last night he’ll ever hit me,” he said. He jammed his right hand in his pocket and looked out over the fields. The fingers on his left hand traced the shell of his left ear absently. He seemed to be thinking of a memory from long ago. He blinked, coming back to the present. “I pressed charges. Two accounts of assault, one for me and one for my mom. Whether or not she’ll go through with it...I don’t know.” 

Ronan swallowed and sat back down next to Adam. This news was oddly satisfying to him. He was glad that bastard wouldn’t hurt them again. He lifted his beer, “are you sure you don’t want one?” 

Adam smiled.

The birds sang in the trees. 

He gently shoved Ronan, “I’m sure.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might add another chapter later tonight or tomorrow morning because I'm not sure I'll get to update on the weekend like I've been doing this coming weekend. So, go ahead and read and review. I promise Chapter Nine is going to be an emotional roller coaster. 
> 
> Lynchesparrrish is the best and here's her obligatory shout out!

As usual, Nino’s was a zoo for a Saturday evening. The tables were jammed full of patrons, the waitresses were working their asses off keeping tea glasses filled and tables cleared. They were filling as quickly as they were wiped off.

Ronan slid into their usual booth next to Noah. Gansey and Adam sat across from them.

The bruise under Adam’s eye had faded enough that it could merely be a trick of the light or a shadow. 

Ronan bumped fists with each of the table’s occupants, their customary greeting. 

None of them talked about the elephant in the room, which appeared to be the fact that Ronan had quit his job. 

Gansey was pouring over the weathered journal he’d created surrounding to Glendower. His brow was furrowed as he studied old newspaper clippings, publicly released photos of the crime scenes, and hastily scribbled eye-witness testimonies in Gansey’s well-practiced hand. 

Ronan watched him read, puzzled by it all. They found him. Why was he still obsessing over a dead serial killer? “I hate to break it to you, Dick, but he’s dead. We found his body, like, three weeks ago.” 

Gansey blinked and looked at him from across the table, “oh. Yes, we did find him.” 

“So what’s with studying at the dinner table?” 

“I’m trying to figure out who the hell is trying to mimic him. What’s the point of pretending to be Glendower and then changing it once we found Glendower’s body? Of course, we know it isn’t him doing the killing. The dental records had proved it was him.” 

He didn’t have an answer to this and neither, it seemed, did anyone else. 

Adam’s finger traced his left ear absently. He sat on the outside of the booth so he could hear their conversations with his right ear. “Unless...the killer is trying to make his own signature?” 

They all looked at Adam. 

“I mean, think about it. The ‘King of Killers’ was the best murderer of all times. The only way somebody could get away with surpassing him is if they did everything he did and then made their own signature known.” 

Gansey nodded, clearly liking this train of thought. He took a pen and jotted it down in his tattered notebook. 

Ronan folded his arms across his chest and scowled. He didn’t have anything to add. He didn’t  _ have _ anything to add. He didn’t work with them anymore. He didn’t know anything about the evidence recovered, what they were determining as far as motives, or victim profiles. It pissed him off. 

Fuck Declan. 

A shadow fell across the table, “are you guys ready to place your order yet?” A young woman asked. She was hardly five feet tall, her dark hair was held back by half-a-dozen little colorful clips, her Nino’s t-shirt had been deliberately shredded. 

“Blue!” Noah exclaimed. He leaned across Ronan and gently gave her hair a pat. 

Ronan shoved him off of him. 

“Noah,” she said with genuine smile instead of the one she’d worn at first (which had resembled the way a person held at gunpoint would have smiled). 

“I thought you quit working here!” 

“No,” she said. “I just picked up the morning shift for a few weeks because one of our other waitresses had her baby. I’m back now! So, what’ll you have?” 

They placed their order and Ronan tried not to the notice the way Gansey stared at the hollow of her throat, or the skin of her legs exposed beneath her ripped jeans. 

Adam stammered through his order, his eyes stuck on the woman’s face. They took in each beauty mark, the shape of her nose, and her yes. 

Ronan’s foul mood grew in intensity. He glared at the napkin dispenser like it had done him some sort of injustice. If he glared at it, he didn’t have to look at the way Adam and Gansey were making fools of themselves. 

“You know who she is?” Gansey asked Noah. 

Noah shrugged with a smile, “we went to highschool together.” 

Gansey seemed to absorb this information with a subtle nod. 

Noah warned, “don’t even think about it, Dick. She’ll rip you up one side and down the other. She’s tiny but fierce.

Ronan smirked at that. He pulled his straw out of his tea and chewed on it. 

Gansey ignored these comments and flipped through his journal again. “Something had to have changed to bring these killings to light. What changed? Why did they start out of the blue?” 

None of them had an answer for that. 

“Did something change around town and we didn’t notice?” 

If there had been a change around town it had been very subtle, because none of them spoke up. 

“Did anybody new move into town?” 

At this, Noah smacked his hand on the table, causing Adam to jump. 

Ronan gave him a nasty glare as he reached across Noah and grabbed a few napkins. His outburst had caused one of the tea glasses to jolt and spill some of its contents onto the polished tabletop. 

“There’s a couple that moved into town about three months ago. They’re names are Green...Greenman... _ Greenmantle _ ! That’s it. They’re Mr. and Mrs. Greenmantle. They live on that dairy farm outside of town. You know, the one that converted one of the barns into a house?” 

“You think they could be behind the murders?” Ronan asked skeptically. It sounded to him like a bunch of snotty people with a decent amount of money. He knew how much they were paying in rent. Declan had been talking about it at church one Sunday. 

In typical Noah-like fashion, he shrugged. “You guys just asked if anybody new had come into into town. I don’t know if that means they’re murderers.” 

“We can’t investigate them unless we have proper cause,” Gansey replied. He was pinching the bridge of his nose with his head craned. 

It was a start. The killings had started shortly after the family had moved into town. That made them suspects, but they couldn’t arrest them and interrogate them unless they had a reason to suspect that they were involved in the murder. Unfortunately, coincidences weren’t enough to warrant an interrogation.

Ronan moved his elbows out of the way as Blue returned with the food. 

“Can I get you guys a refill?” She asked. 

“Yes, of course.” Gansey slid his glass to the edge of the table. 

Gansey and Adam were staring again.

Jealousy reared its ugly head and Ronan folded his arms over his chest and glared at Blue.

She glared back. “Do you want a refill on your tea or not?” She held the pitcher up to Ronan. 

“Pass,” he growled. 

“What’s his problem?” She muttered. 

“I don’t have a problem.” 

Blue looked exasperated and two ticks off from dumping the pitcher of tea over his head. The only reason she probably wasn’t was because she was working and didn’t want to get fired. “Obviously, you do.” 

Ronan glared at her. He didn’t want to argue with the petite waitress his friends were crushing on. His frustration burned a hot trail through his chest, his jealousy was a bitter drug on the back of his tongue. 

What pissed him off the most about it was that there was no logical explanation for his jealously. It was just there, pressing down on him, smothering him. 

Blue snorted and rolled her eyes, “whatever. Just flag me down if you need anything else.” She turned and left, oblivious to Adam and Gansey’s eyes following her the entire way. 

The table’s occupants all silent for nearly a solid minute, the tension in the air was thick between them. 

He knew it was because of him, but Ronan did nothing to dissolve it. 

“Ronan,” Gansey said. His voice was stern, the way a father would scold a child. “That was entirely uncalled for. I believe you owe that young lady an apology.” 

“You can believe whatever you want.” He rarely apologized for anything. There was seldomly a thing that he felt warranted an apology. Most of the things he did, even if they made him seem like an asshole, he did unapologetically. He rarely said or did things without intent. 

Gansey sighed, knowing that he was going to lose this battle. 

Ronan responded by sliding a slice of pizza onto his plate. 

That seemed to be the cue. Everybody else filled their plates with pizza. They spoke between bites of cheese and sauce, wiping fingers on jeans and napkins. 

“What are we going to do about the Greenmantles?” Adam asked. He wiped the grease from his face with a napkin. “We can’t interrogate them without a proper cause.” 

“I know,” Gansey said. “We’re going to have to watch them and dig up some research. It can’t be a coincidence.” 

They all knew that Gansey didn’t believe in coincidences.

Adam asked, “Who do you want to put on that? Me? Cheng?”

“I’ll do it,” Noah volunteered. “It’s not like I have anything else to do now that we’ve properly identified Glendower.” 

“That’s true,” Gansey agreed. “Noah, you go ahead and do some digging on the Greenmantles. Parrish and I will try to put more pieces together. Ronan,” he paused, realizing that Ronan was no longer a part of their workforce. “I know that you’re not our coworker anymore, but if you happen to hear or see anything about this new family in town will you let us know?” 

Ronan shrugged and that was good enough.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lynchsparrrish (on tumblr) and I both agree that this is one of the best chapters in this story so far. I'm apologizing in advance for the feels this chapter will give you. 
> 
> I'd like to give a special shout out to Punkrocksong for being so quick on the draw and reviewing the last chapter because I literally posted it just hours ago!
> 
> Warning- Character death.

Ronan hated many things. He hated people who chewed too loudly, he hated liars, he hated the way both roads in and out of Henrietta seemed to under construction for half of the year. One more thing he added to his list of things he hated was  _ baling hay _ . 

Baling hay was hot, sweaty,  _ itchy _ work. When it was all said and done, Ronan was left with a million tiny cuts and hay-slivers embedded in his sun-burnt skin. 

“Can you toss that chunk of hay to the cows?” Ronan asked Opal as he climbed down from the loft. He pointed a gloved hand to a bale that had broken outside of the barn door. 

She didn’t pause in coddling the orange tabby th at had taken residence in the hay barn. She looked at it and then shrugged, “do I have to?” 

“I suppose not,” he grumbled. He stepped outside of the outbuilding and turned to look at her. “Unless you want to be shut in here with that cat, I suggest you come outside.” 

Opal let the cat jump from her arms and followed him out. “Baling hay looks like it sucks.” 

“It does.”  He used a pitch fork and began to load up the wheelbarrow with the loose flakes of hay. 

Opal watched. 

She usually accompanied him when he did his chores, unless she was in school. She never really did anything productive, but she was more than content to pet the cat, chase the chickens, or scratch the heifers behind their ears. 

She turned her attention back towards the house. From here, it sat several acres away, across the rolling green fields and the small grove of fruit-bearing trees Niall Lynch had planted before his death. “I think somebody is here.” 

Ronan stood up straight and used a gloved hand to shade his eyes from the relentless sun. He squinted into the distance. There did seem to be another car pulled up close to the BMW. “Come on, runt. Let’s go check it out.” He left the wheelbarrow where it sat. It could wait until later. 

When he saw Adam standing on the porch, dressed in his button-down shirt and slacks, Ronan was suddenly all-too aware of the hay clinging to his black-tank and jeans, the sunburn itching at his skin.  “Parrish, don’t you look dapper.” 

He nodded his head at Ronan in acknowledgement. There was dark circles beneath his eyes, a knot between his brows. 

“Come inside and we can have a drink. How was work.”

“I don’t drink.” 

“We have juice and shit.” 

Adam hesitated on the porch, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He stepped aside only to let Opal pass so she could thunder up the stairs to her bedroom. 

Ronan became hyper-aware of how wrong this meeting felt. Something about it screamed at him that this was not normal, that something was off. “Parrish?” He goaded carefully. 

He looked like he’d aged thirty years since they’d seen each other at Nino’s nearly a week ago. 

Something was wrong. 

“It’s Czerny…” 

Ronan eyed him warily. “What about him?” 

He sighed and shook his head, his long-fingered hand reached up and ran through his hair in a distressed way, leaving it a tousled mess. “He’s...he’s been killed.” 

Ronan felt his entire body go shockingly cold. “ _ What _ ?” 

“He’s dead, Ronan.” 

The sudden icy feeling that had overcome him had quickly faded to red-hot. He lunged forward and grabbed Adam by the shirt. “ _ How _ ?  _ How _ ,  _ Parrish _ ?!” 

Adam stiffened in Ronan’s grasp his pained expression smoothing to one of barely contained anger. He shoved Ronan off of him and took a step back, his hands pressed to the wrinkled spots in his crisply starched shirt. “Don’t ever grab me like that again,” he said. His voice was cool an unfamiliar. 

Ronan immediately felt the sharp sting of regret, but he didn’t move. “How?” He asked again, his voice roughened with contained emotions.

“His body was found in a dumpster behind Nino’s. His head was completely bashed in. It was...awful.” 

_ Noah _ . Of all the people in the entire world why did it have to be Noah?! 

Anger ignited within him, setting him off like a bomb. He swore and kicked his mother’s rocking chair hard enough that it toppled off the porch with a pitiful thud. He turned away from the chair paced to the other end of the porch. He was so full of grief and self-contained anger that he didn’t know what to do with it all. 

Ronan scrubbed a hand through his shaved hair. He didn’t look at Adam as he spoke, “I need time alone.” 

Adam looked to the screen door, where Opal had gone. His southern accent was tangible when he spoke, he was too tired and sad to try to hide it. “What about the kid?” 

_ Fuck _ . Ronan had forgotten about Opal. He couldn’t be alone with just his thoughts and whiskey for company. She needed a place to stay. 

“She can stay with me for the night,” Adam finally offered. “It won’t be much fun, but I have pizza and cable.” 

He looked at the blond and frowned. Was it too much? Adam was grieving too, although he was doing it much more quietly than Ronan was. 

“I don’t mind,” he added. 

Ronan moved the screen door and shouted into the house, “Opal! Pack your bag. You’re staying with Adam tonight.” 

Three minutes later, the girl raced down the steps with her backpack. “I’ll be in the car,” she said as she brushed by. 

Concern was written in the crinkle of Adam’s eyes as he studied Ronan. “Are you sure you’re going to be alright by yourself?” 

“I’ll just be here...drinking.” 

“Call me if you need anything.” He knew Ronan hardly ever used his phone, but he said it anyway. 

“Thanks, Parrish.” 

Adam just nodded and looked at him one last time before opening the door to his shitbox. 

He got inside, but the car didn’t move from the other side of the BMW. 

Ronan watched, he could hear Adam’s voice raise, followed by another raised voice. 

Was that Opal? Were they fighting already? 

The passenger door opened and out tumbled the waitress from Nino’s. 

Adam opened his door and stood up, shouting over the roof of the car, “Blue! Get back in the car!” 

“No!” She snapped back, without turning to look at him. She was wearing some sort of outfit that had more holes in the shirt than was necessary, revealing a neon shirt beneath it. Her jeans were splattered with paint. 

“ _ Blue _ !” 

She continued to ignore Adam and she marched right up to Ronan. 

Ronan stared down at her. What had she been doing in Adam’s car? Why was she here, standing before him looking like she’d just been expelled from art school. 

“Opal is going to stay at my house tonight. She’ll be safe with my mother and my aunts.” 

He cocked a brow at her. 

“Adam needs his time to mourn too, you know.” 

“Okay.” 

Adam’s car whined to life and started to turn around in the driveway. 

“What are you doing here?” 

“Noah was my friend too,” Blue said. “I may not have worked with him, but we did spend a lot of time together. If you’re going to drink yourself stupid you might as well have company.” She brushed past Ronan and opened the door to the farmhouse. “Now what’s it going to be? Vodka? Or whiskey?” 

Ronan followed her in, “I’m Irish as fuck. It’s going to be whiskey.” 

 

The two of them spent the night drinking. Blue mixed vodka with whatever juice Ronan had in the refrigerator and he drank whiskey on ice.

“To Noah!” Blue exclaimed, clinking their glasses together each time they made a new drink. 

“To Noah!” Ronan would heartily agree. 

Ronan’s phone blasted music through the speakers of the house while they drank. They drank and talked, each of them finding out they were more alike than they thought. “I hate stupid people. They’re just so... _ stupid _ .” “Me too, brat. Me too.” 

Ronan’s music was a mis-mash of everything that represented him. It was angry EDM, classical music (featuring bagpipes from time to time), classic rock, and blues. 

“I can change the song!” Ronan offered, shouting over the wail of bagpipes. 

Blue shook her head, her face was flushed from alcohol. “No! I like it! I feel like it makes me see who you really are. Music is really the way to see into somebody’s soul, you know?” 

He nodded. He knew. 

He knocked back another drink. The whiskey burned a trail of fire down his throat that went straight to his stomach. “Do you need another drink?” 

Blue held her glass out to him, “fill me up!” 

He took their glasses and mixed each of them a drink. He paused when exiting the kitchen. He spotted a snowglobe sitting undisturbed on the counter, along with a bunch of other odds and ends Ronan had inherited with the house. 

He picked it up and studied it, feeling like the weight of Noah’s loss was crushing him. 

Three years ago, right when they’d all started working together, they’d done a secret santa gift exchange in the department. Noah had pulled Ronan’s name and had bought him the snowglobe. When Ronan shook it, Noah had leaned in close with bright eyes. He’d said, “ _ look at all of that glitter _ !” 

He set Blue’s drink down and drained his fresh glass of whiskey. He stared at the snowglobe and shook it. He said nothing as he watched the glitter swirl around.

He felt choked up. He couldn’t breathe. 

Overhead, the song changed. The violent blasts of bass stopped. Over the speakers came the words, “ _ Squash one, squash two, squash three _ …” 

The song had been a sort of joke between them. He and Noah knew how much the others had hated the Murder Squash song and would prank them with it frequently. Many laughs had been shared over the lyrics, many drives had been spent shouting the words at the tops of their lungs. 

The sadness was quickly overcome by rage.

_ Why _ ?!  _ Why Noah _ ?!

Noah had never had a mean streak in his body. He’d never hurt anybody and he always saw the best in others, even when they didn’t deserve it. Why did it have to be him? 

It was too much. 

Ronan didn’t yell or shout when he smashed the snow globe. Instead, he’d just hurled it as hard as he could at the kitchen wall, tears stinging his eyes. 

He stared at the shattered remains, the glass fractured and the glitter strewn across the floor. It felt like his soul. 

He sank to his knees and buried his face into his hands.  _ Why _ ?  _ Why _ ?  _ Why _ ? 

The music stopped and he heard light footsteps move across the creaking wooden floor towards him. Blue’s arm was warm against his skin where it pressed against him. She smelled like garlic, vanilla, and booze. “Hey,” she said quietly. 

Ronan dropped his hands into his lap after he wiped away the tears. He didn’t look at her. 

“I think we both could use some fresh air.” She tugged on his arm, Ronan willingly followed. 

They both sat out on the front steps of the porch, a large blanket draped over their shoulders. Blue leaned heavily against Ronan as they listened to the cicadas sing and the cows low in their sleep. 

“How did you know him?” He finally asked. 

“Noah and I went to highschool together,” Blue said. “We dated for a little while. Then, he went off to college and I stayed here to do online courses.” She let out a soft sigh. It was hard to tell if it was because she was remembering the past or sad because Noah was gone. “He was my first kiss.” 

“Hm,” was all Ronan said. 

“What about you? Who was your first kiss?” 

Ronan thought about the question and whether or not he actually wanted to answer. He decided that it couldn’t hurt. They were talking about the past. “His name was Joseph Kavinsky.” 

“I know that guy. He’s a dick.” 

“Yeah, he is.” 

They sat in silence once more. The sky was starting to lighten up, just a faint hint of dark green on the horizon. 

“You know Gansey likes you, right?” He asked. 

She turned her head to look at him. “He’s always so condescending and rude to me. He’s just another one of those rich guys who thinks their money can get them whatever they want.” 

Ronan shook his head. “No he’s not. He grew up with a lot of money. He’s always trying to polite and he accidentally makes it sound like he’s talking down on people. He doesn’t mean it like that. He’s really a great guy.” 

“I’ll remind myself of that the next time I see him.” There was no sarcasm in her tone, nothing to indicate that she wasn’t being honest. She was quiet for a minute before she said, “I can tell you like Adam.” 

He felt his defenses raise, his jaw set in defiance. 

“He’s pretty.” 

Something about that made his defiant look melt into a smile. It had been just a simple statement, a simple observation. She wasn’t wrong. He spoke, deciding that if she ever brought it up again, his words were heavily influenced by alcohol. “Yeah, I suppose he’s good looking. He’s got those really high cheekbones, bright eyes, he always keeps his hair neat. His hands are really gentle, careful, and graceful at whatever he does. Like, his hands make him a freak of nature. It’s fucking weird how...good they are.” 

Blue  snorted a little laugh and bumped her shoulder against his playfully. “Well, that explains why you’re always staring at his hands when you’re at Nino’s. You’ve got a hand fetish.” 

Ronan’s cheeks warmed, he didn’t think it had to do with the whiskey. “I do not.” 

“You do too!” 

“Shut up.” 

He didn’t talk about how he’d fantasized about those hands multiple times or the way that watching Adam pull his gloves on made his mouth go dry. 

Instead, the two of them stayed up all night talking about everything and anything. When morning came around, Ronan cooked breakfast, and by the time they finished eating he was sober enough to take her home.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is my fav, fav, FAVORITE so far! Honestly, I don't know why but this one just jives with me really well. Maybe it's because I switched it up and went from Adam's POV this time. I'm not really sure. lynchesparrrish on tumblr loves this one the most too! I can't say I blame her!
> 
> We're all settled into our new home and I'm working on the later chapters of LOTSD already, so I decided to post. 
> 
> My tumblr is all-my-dreams-and-ambitions so if you guys 1) review here and 2) send my a TRC prompt I'll go ahead and write you a oneshot!

A storm had trapped a coldfront in peaks and valleys surrounding Henrietta. The rain poured down, hitting against the black umbrellas, droplets beading on the water resistant surface before they slipped down smattering against Gansey’s black peacoat. 

It was a cold and miserable day, perfectly fitting for an event that was just as miserable. 

Adam stood in the muddy cemetery staring at the gaping hole opened up in the earth. Noah’s casket sat above the hole, the wood was sleek and smooth, and the roses were a vibrant punch of color in the melancholy day.  

The funeral had been a closed casket affair. Even the mortician had a hard time trying to make Noah’s face look like it hadn’t been beaten in. 

When Adam closed his eyes he could still see the crime scene where his body had been found. It had been horrible. He’d never upchucked on the job before, but seeing his friend broken and ruined had destroyed his resolve. 

He didn’t try to think about that, though. He did his best to remember Noah as he had been; fun, wild, and energetic. He remembered seeing pictures of him when he was younger on display at the funeral home and they had made him smile. Noah behind the wheel of a red mustang. Noah surrounded by paper ravens as they flew through the air, a fist raised and his mouth open in a jubilant shout. The photo of Noah and Blue at prom in high school, both of them making silly faces had made Adam smile.

He kept telling himself that Noah would want to be remembered for  _ those _ memories and not for the way his friends had discovered his corpse. 

The funeral goers listened to the preacher with glassy eyes and sniffling noses. They all had that in common, but each of them seem to react to Noah’s death differently. It settled heavier on some than others. 

His family  huddled together near the front of the casket, his mother had been wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. At times, she’d choke out a sob and others she just clutch stoic Mr. Czerny’s arm for strength. 

Noah’s younger sister, Adele, appeared to have cried all of her tears away. She stared at Noah’s casket with a blank look between her mother and her older sister. Both of whom, have shockingly blonde hair like their brother. 

Gansey stood next to Adam, his face is full of sympathy and sadness. Over the past few days he primarily acted like the Gansey he wore for other people; a polite, charming, southern gentleman that was good at shaking hands and speaking to strangers. However, in moments like this, he briefly transformed into the Gansey that others rarely got to see. He became a man who was tired, sad, and broken. At these times, he often resembled  man that was too old for his years. 

Ronan stood on Adam’s other side. His face was contorted into a scowl, but that wasn’t uncommon. It was the expression, Adam learned, that he wore when he was trying too hard to not convey any emotions at all. He was angry at the injustice of it all, saddened and hurt, even if he would never admit it outloud. 

Blue stood quietly on Gansey’s other side. She had dark circles beneath her red-rimmed eyes. She was angry too, but she wasn’t afraid to openly cry in an exhibition of her grief. 

Adam felt...numb. He’d spent the days after Noah’s passing the only way he knew how. He scrabbled for answers in the office, he went over evidence time and time again. Often, he let himself in the middle of the night. Gansey almost always showed up sometime during the night too, claiming his insomnia was the reason he was up. 

The funeral drew to a close and the preacher asked for the rest of the guests to leave the Czernys time to mourn in private while the casket was lowered into the earth. 

They piled into Gansey’s camaro. Adam sat in the back with Blue. The empty spot in the middle was a painful reminder that Noah was gone and he wasn’t coming back. 

Even though Blue hadn’t ridden with them until recently, Noah had always put himself in the middle so he could poke his head up front and talk to Ronan and Gansey over the grumbling engine of the Pig. 

“Where do you want to go?” Gansey asked them. 

In the solemn silence it was easy to see that none of them really wanted to part ways. It was harder to grieve when there wasn’t a shoulder to cry on. 

“We can go back to the barns,” Ronan suggested. 

It was as good of a place as any. The old farmhouse was certainly large enough to comfortably fit the four of them. They would all be entirely too cramped in Adam’s one bedroom apartment and Monmouth was a painful reminder that Noah was no longer with them. 

The ride back to the barns was silent, save for the squeal of the windshield wipers and the splat of rain against the roof. 

Adam had never been further than the front porch before. 

The inside of the house was messy. It wasn’t messy in a neglected way. It wasn’t garbage that cluttered the bookshelves and the countertops. Instead, it was trinkets and various odds and ends that all had served a purpose once upon a time. 

The atmosphere felt as though there were still entities living here that loved and nurtured, bringing a sense of nostalgia to the home.

It wasn’t what Adam had expected of Ronan Lynch.

Ronan was the sharp lines of his tattoo, his shaved head, his wicked car, and the snarl of his  mouth. He was a farmer that cared for his animals on a daily basis, a man that had enough paternal instincts to take a young girl under his wing. He was...deeper than Adam had initially thought. 

The problem Adam had with Ronan wasn’t the fact that he was loud and cussed like a sailor. No, the problem he had with Ronan Lynch was that he couldn’t find a place for him. 

Adam thought logically and reasonably. In his mind, things had a certain place where they went. He was good at compartmentalizing his feelings and his emotions and organizing his thoughts before he spoke. 

His problem with Ronan was every time Adam thought he had him put into a box, figured out, the man was breaking the mold. Adam couldn’t make him fit anywhere. It was unsettling, but kept drawing him in like a moth to a flame. 

“The living room is this way,” Gansey said politely as he guided Blue in that direction. 

Adam lingered in the kitchen, his blue eyes flicking over every surface, taking it in and storing it to memory. It felt like he was witnessing a new part of Ronan. 

“Have you ever seen a kitchen before, Parrish?” Ronan asked as he loosened his tie. He pulled it off and tossed it onto the back of a kitchen chair with a disgusted look, like it had been strangling him. 

“I was just thinking,” Adam replied. 

“After my dad died, my mom had a stroke. She died too, a few days after. My old man left me the farm.” 

Adam remembered riding in the passenger seat of the BMW when Ronan had disclosed his father had been murdered. He knew it had been hard on Ronan (Declan and Gansey had both disclosed as much on two separate occasions), but losing his mother in the same week had to have been terrible. 

He couldn’t think of anything to say so he said, “I’m sorry to hear that.” 

Ronan just shrugged in response. 

Adam unbuttoned his jacket. He glanced up and saw Ronan staring at his fingers as he unfastened each button. It made his heart pick up speed. 

When he was younger, Adam’s parents had him convinced that he would be nothing. They had convinced him that he wasn’t capable of being loved. He could still hear Robert sneer, “ _ you think that pretty girl is going to like someone like  _ **_you_ ** _? You’re an ugly, selfish, son of a bitch and you’re going to be alone ‘til the day you die. _ ”

Since then, Adam had one serious relationship with a girl named Kate. They dated in college until she broke up with him for not spending enough time with her. She’d told him she was too selfish to stop studying for one night to spend time with her. 

He hadn’t been with anybody since. 

Was the look Ronan was giving him love? Probably not. Perhaps his father was right and he’d never find love, but sometimes he liked to pretend it was possible. 

He paused when he was hanging up his jacket. The garbage can was overflowing with empty beer cans. Adam didn’t drink, but he knew what a few cases of beer looked like after it was drained. 

It made him angry. 

Noah was dead and Ronan had spent the night before his funeral getting drunk and having a grand time? It was bullshit. 

“Is every night a party for you?” He asked, feeling ugly and dark. 

Ronan’s brows drew down in a frown. “What are you talking about, Parrish?” 

He skillfully hid the hurt with an accusation. “Obviously, you’ve had quite a bit to drink these past few nights. You’ve got a few cases of beer climbing out of your trash can.”

He scowled at him, “we all have our own ways of coping. Not all of us have to be sober pricks.” He moved past Adam, brushing against him in his haste to get out of the kitchen. The stairs groaned in protest as he stomped up them. 

Adam was left alone and slightly disgruntled. Ronan’s tone had packed some heat and obviously, it was intended for him. Maybe Adam shouldn’t have said anything about the cans. It wasn’t his business. 

He chewed the chapped skin of his lower lip, tracing his left ear with a sigh. 

After a moment of contemplation, he decided he owed Ronan an apology even if he wasn’t going to get one in return. He passed Blue and Gansey chatting quietly on the couch and climbed the stairs. 

Ronan’s room was just as cluttered as every other space in the house. There was a small car sitting on his dresser, Chainsaw was ripping up newspaper in her cage, and there was a sword hanging on the wall above Ronan’s bed. 

A picture sat on the nightstand. It was of Gansey, Ronan, and Noah before Adam had been a part of their lives. The three of them were young and happy, smiles lit up each of their faces as they lounged against the orange camaro. 

Adam’s eyes stopped on Noah’s smiling face. He felt shitty for fighting with Ronan. 

Ronan’s back is to him, the black ink of his tattoo showed beneath the collar of his firmly pressed shirt. “What do you want, Parrish?” 

He’d been on the brink of apologizing, but something in Ronan’s voice made him angry again. His apology died on his tongue. “I cared about Noah, too.  _ I’m _ hurting too, Ronan, but you don’t see me drinking my weight in beer.” 

He turned around and faced him. From this close, Adam could see a nick on his jaw from a razor, the bags under his eyes, and smell the scent of his aftershave. “You’re sober.”

“Yeah, I’m sober but that doesn’t mean that this doesn’t fucking suck!” His voice was starting to tremble. Adam took a moment to carefully piece his emotions back together, to school himself into something more composed. 

He couldn’t lose control. 

Ronan’s eyes searched his face. They flickered to his eyes and then down to his lips before returning to his eyes. Blue on blue. He looked torn and conflicted. He rubbed the back of his head and dropped his hand to his side. “Fuck it,” he finally breathed before closing the distance between them. 

Adam felt his heart stop. 

Ronan’s kiss was like a fire. It was hot, full of intent, and wanted to consume Adam until he was nothing left but charred bones. It was lips dragging on lips, the clack of teeth, a ragged breath, and hands in hair. 

His heart exploded. 

They paused to catch their breath, their noses brushing against each other, lips just millimeters apart. 

After a few heartbeats worth of labored breath, Adam closed the distance between them. His hand grabbed the back of Ronan’s neck and pulled him close. 

He was flying higher and faster than he ever had before. It was surreal. 

It was wrong. 

He stopped and pulled back again, this time putting a good foot of space between them. 

Ronan’s face was flushed, his electric eyes were bright and alive. His lips were parted slightly and a wonderful shade of pink from being kissed with such fervor. 

Adam wanted to catalogue that look forever, even if it further broke the mold in which he had tried to place Ronan previously. 

That look didn’t last long. It lasted for maybe one full breath before Ronan put his guard up. His expression became impossible to read. He swore and looked at the floor, saying nothing.

“It’s wrong,” Adam finally managed to say. 

“That’s what the old women in church say too,” he replied with a self-deprecating chuckle. 

It took him a second to realize Ronan was talking about being gay. “N-No,” he stammered, “not that.” He took a few deep breaths, his fingers brushing against his lips where Ronan’s had been just moments before. “Noah is dead,” he finally said, “and it seems really disrespectful to be making out on the day of his funeral.” 

Yes, that was the most appropriate way to explain how he felt. The guilt was the strongest of the muddled emotions he was feeling. It was the one he could make the most sense out of. The rest of it left him feeling like clothes in the washing machine during the spin cycle, blurred, muddied, and dizzy.  

Ronan was silent for nearly a full minute before he looked at Adam again, “let’s not talk about it.”

The spinning had stopped, leaving Adam feeling confused and uncertain. He blinked and asked,“well, what do you want to talk about?” 

“Anything else.” 

Adam moved and sat on Ronan’s bed. He watched as Chainsaw eyed him before she flapped out of the cage and landed on Ronan’s shoulder. “We don’t think that Noah’s death is related to the Glendower-wannabe.” 

Ronan sat next to him, “no?” 

“No. The evidence has nothing in common.” 

Each of them were silent again. The air between them felt forced and awkward. 

“You should come back to the department,” Adam added. 

Ronan snorted, “Why would I do that?” 

“Because Noah would want you to,” he said first. “Plus, working with Cheng sucks. I’d like to have my partner back.” 

“There’s no way Declan will let me come back until I have legal guardianship over Opal.” 

“I’ll do the paperwork for you,” he volunteered. “We need you back, Ronan.” 

“I’ll think about it,” Ronan said. He stood up and lumbered out of the bedroom. 

Adam followed. 

He made himself at home on the opposite end of the couch from Blue and Gansey while Ronan occupied an armchair a few feet away. 

Gansey’s eyes darted between the two of them, a small frown touched his lips. “Did I miss something between the two of you?” 

“No,” Adam lied quickly. “Why?” 

“I swear I heard you guys arguing just a few minutes ago.” 

“We kissed and made up, Dick. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you get into an argument,” Ronan added. His smirk was a knife laced with poison.

Adam felt his ears turn red. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those who commented on the last chapter! I'm glad you all enjoyed it so much!

Gansey’s phone was ringing time and time again. 

Ronan made an annoyed sound and looked at his best friend from where he sat at his desk. “Are you going to answer that?” 

Gansey nodded and picked it up, his voice was honeyed and polite as he spoke as he greeted the caller. 

It had been two weeks since Ronan had returned to the department. Ronan still got a sense of smug satisfaction every single time he thought about Declan’s irritated face when he dropped the stack of paperwork on his desk so he could claim legal guardianship over Opal.

Noah’s case had started to go cold despite their attempts to keep finding evidence. They had found none. Whoever the killer had been had been careful enough to not leave fingerprints. 

Adam straightened up at his desk and turned in his chair so he could hear what Gansey was saying out of his non-deaf ear. His blue eyes kept darting to Ronan and then back towards their friend. 

Neither of them had talked about the kiss, but Ronan had certainly thought about it. 

He couldn’t help it. It had been the best kiss he’d had in a  _ very _ long time. He’d been totally infatuated with the way Adam’s fingers had brushed against his jaw, cradled the back of his neck. He couldn’t shake the feel of the rough skin on Adam’s lower lip biting into Ronan’s. 

Ronan craved the way he felt like he was burning from the inside out. He felt like a bomb when Adam kissed him, one with the fuse lit and burning dangerously low, waiting to explode at any given minute. 

“What’s the scoop, Gansey-boy?” Henry Cheng asked. His hair was ridiculously spiked. Ronan couldn’t help but think that if a match was struck too closely to Cheng’s hair that it would erupt in a brilliant flame. 

“There’s been another body found,” he said standing up. 

A weight settled on Ronan’s chest.

Adam looked at him, his eyebrows drawn together slightly. 

It was at that moment that Ronan knew his sense of dread was completely justifiable. Noah’s case wouldn’t be looked at for weeks. Or, until they could figure out who this next victim was and who committed the crime. 

None of them wanted that. 

Ronan cussed a furious strain of curses and kicked his desk chair aside. It bounced off of Cheng’s desk with a crash that was wasn’t as remarkable as the occasion warranted. He kicked it again and was still unsatisfied with the result. 

The slamming of the BMW door did a much better job at portraying his feelings. 

“This fucking sucks,” he growled as he sped through town. “Noah’s case is going to go fucking cold.” 

“It won’t,” Adam said. Although, there was an uncertainty in his voice that was evident to Ronan’s ears. “We won’t let it.” 

He knew that what they all wanted to think, that they’d find Noah’s killer, that it was only a matter of time. He also knew that they all thought it was bullshit. 

Throughout the course of the drive, his mind kept circling around a few facts. The first was that Noah’s case was growing colder by the minute. The second was the fact that he had kissed Adam Parrish. The third, was that Adam Parrish had kissed him back. The fourth, was that neither he nor Adam had made a move to talk about said kiss. The fifth and final fact, was that Adam was riding in the passenger seat of his car and they  _ still _ hadn’t talked about them kissing. 

Ronan didn’t want to talk about it now. It didn’t seem like an appropriate time. 

He pulled into the drive of an apartment building. The cops were already there and they were taping up a police barrier. 

As they approached the apartment, there was another thing neither he or Adam were  _ not  _ talking about. Addressing the fact that Noah wasn’t there to greet them was too painful. It would reopen wounds that hadn’t had time to heal. 

“Christ, this place is a closet.” Ronan ducked his head as he stepped through the doorway. 

It was a cramped efficiency apartment The body was lying right smack in the middle of the bathroom floor. The blood stained the tiles a red so dark they were almost black. 

“How did the neighbors not hear the struggle?” Gansey asked as he followed Ronan and Adam in. “Cheng,” he called, “get statements from the neighbors to see if they heard or saw anything suspicious. 

“On it, boss!” Henry called back before descending the stairs. 

“It looks like the wannabe’s back at it again,” Adam said. His blue eyes raked over the body with intense concentration. 

Watching Adam work was an incredible sight. He was an intelligent man, who was a quick study. Gansey often referred to him as a genius and he wasn’t wrong. Adam was always picking up on subtle hints that nobody else seemed to notice; body language, tells, and evidence. 

Adam pulled out a pair of gloves from his coat pocket and began to pull them on over his long fingers. 

Ronan couldn’t help but stare. He had memorized the feeling of those fingers brushing against his jaw, against the skin on the back of his neck. He wondered what it was like to feel those fingers tracing the lines of his tattoo, to stick those fingers in his mouth--

“ _ Ronan _ ,” Gansey’s voice brought him back to the present. 

He frowned, annoyed. “What?” 

“Are you okay? You were kind of...somewhere else.” 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” 

His look was concerned. He knew that Gansey was constantly making sure that Ronan was okay. He’d taken great care whenever a case made reminded Ronan too much of his father, to ensure that his best friend was okay. Now, after Noah’s death, he was still ensuring that Ronan wasn’t hurting too terribly. 

“Gansey, seriously.” 

He nodded slowly, “okay.” He turned back to the body and where Adam was crouched over the corpse.

The blond man was watching the two of them with a slight frown on his face, although his cheeks were tinged pink. 

“What do you say, Adam?” 

Adam swallowed and dragged his fingers slowly across the arms of the victim. “It’s the same as always. There’s tight bonds, multiple lacerations to the wrists, and the legs are tied below the knees.” He turned him over and the ‘G’ had soaked his light blue sweater in blood, the fabric was frayed. 

A single rose fell from the victim’s teeth, the petals bloodstained and perfect. 

Gansey crouched to inspect the rose, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Gentlemen, I think I know where we can start searching for a suspect.” 

* * *

 

Ronan couldn’t count the number of times he’d been to the flower shop on all ten of his fingers. Mostly, because he’d never been in one before. 

The air was heavy with the smell of flowers and incense. Bouquets were on display behind the counter. Various racks held small gifts like throw pillows, coffee mugs, vases, and decorative nic-nacs and shit. 

He stood out like a whore in church. 

“Can I help you?” A woman asked. She set a vase of wildflowers down on the counter before her. She smiled at Adam and Ronan as they approached. 

Adam’s voice was a sophisticated drawl that he reserved for interacting with the locals. When he spoke, goosebumps erupted across Ronan’s skin. “Hello, ma’am. We have a few questions about your roses.” 

Her smile didn’t change, “of course. I can do my best to answer.” 

“How often do you get shipments of roses in?” 

“We usually get an order every week or so,” she said. “Although, when hurricane season comes it gets harder to get them. Sometimes, the flooding ruins the crop. You know?” 

“Absolutely, of course.” Adam was every bit a southern gentleman, a persona he had learned from Gansey. “Now, what colors do you have them in?” 

“Typically, we carry them in white, pink, and red.” 

“What do you sell the most of?” 

“The red,” she said without hesitation. 

“And what size bouquets do you offer?” 

“Well, we can sell them in singles, half-dozens, or two dozen. Although, from time to time we do get special orders that require a different number of roses than the usual orders.” She smiled and pulled out a length of ribbon to tie around the vase on the counter. “Can I ask how long the two of you have been together?” 

His facade cracked and he swallowed. His blue eyes darted to Ronan, his ears turned pink. “Um…” 

Ronan grinned, it was as sharp as a knife. “We’ve been partners for a while.” 

Adam made a sound like a cat choking on a hairball. 

Ronan flashed his badge at the woman and said, “we have just a couple more questions if you don’t mind.”  

Her smile faded into one that was more serious. “Oh...okay.” 

“Do you have a list of customers who have purchased roses in the past few days? You know, ones where the roses would still be fresh?” 

“It’ll take me a few minutes to find a list for you, but I’m sure I can get you one.” 

When they received the list, the detectives thanked the woman and took it back to the car. The two of them sat with their heads craned over it as they read. 

Ronan was hyper-aware of the fact that Adam’s face was inches from his own. The last time the two of them had been this close they’d kissed. He was so busy focused on Adam’s forest-like scent that he wasn’t really reading the words on the page. 

“Right here,” Adam said finally. He pointed to a name on the paper. “Colin Greenmantle. That’s the name Noah was looking into before he was killed.” 

“That fucking bastard,” Ronan hiissed. He sat up straight and turned on the car. He revved the engine up before whipping onto the street. He sped down it, surpassing the town’s speed limits. 

“Ronan,” Adam exclaimed, bewildered. “Where the hell are you going?!” 

“We’re headed to that fucking dairy farm where that pretentious bastard lives!” 

“Why?” 

He gave his partner a look that said he was questioning whether or not Adam was actually a genius. “What the fuck, Parrish? So I can ask him on a date.” He rolled his eyes. “Obviously, it’s so we can bring him in for an interrogation.” 

“You can’t!” 

“Why not?!” 

“We need a warrant!” 

“Jesus fucking Christ!” He cussed furiously. 

They needed a goddamned warrant.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I just finished writing the entire story! Of course, I will continue to post regularly (because I'm trying to figure out the plot to another Pynch fic and need the time) on Wednesdays and Sundays! However, I decided to post a celebration chapter!
> 
> Thank you lynchesparrrish (on tumblr) for making sure I have all of my ducks in a row!

When Adam had grown up in the trailer park, he’d always dreamed of living in a place like this. Okay, not quite like this. The Greenmantles were taking up residence in a barn on a dairy farm. The inside of it had completely been renovated into a rustic modern home for people who easily made six figures a year. 

Still, Adam had often dreamed of living in a place similar to this one. The place in his visions of the future had less cows in the front yard. 

He looked at Ronan out of the corner of his eye as they approached. They hadn’t talked about the kiss since it had happened and at this point, Adam wasn’t sure they would. However, just because they hadn’t talked about it, didn’t mean that he hadn’t thought about it. 

He had thought about it a lot. 

More importantly, he’d thought about the way it had made him feel. 

Ronan didn’t do anything half-way. Even when he purposely half-assed something he did with one-hundred percent certainty. His kiss had been the same way. He had pressed his lips to Adam’s without hesitation, with full purpose, like a man who knew what he wanted. 

Adam didn’t know what he wanted. 

“Are you going to get out?” Ronan asked. “Or are you going to sit there and stare at this place all day?” 

He opened his mouth to reply, but it didn’t matter. Ronan was already out of the car and slamming the door. He sighed and got out, too. He made sure his gun wasn’t buckled into his holster before approaching the front door with Ronan. 

“Do you think they’re home?” Ronan asked before slamming his fist into the polished front door so hard the glass rattled. 

“There’s a mercedes and a cadillac parked out front,” Adam said. “I’m sure they’re both home.” 

When nobody answered the door right away, Ronan pounded on it again. “Greenmantle, open up! We’ve got a goddamned warrant!” 

He knew telling his partner not to cuss was pointless, so Adam just rolled his eyes. 

Just when Ronan appeared ready to kick down the door, it opened. 

A short blonde woman looked out. Her eyebrows were tipped down and her mouth was pressed into a thin line, giving her the appearance that she was annoyed. “Can I help you two?” She asked. She folded her arms, the sleeves of her pink silk bathrobe wrinkled. 

Adam spoke before Ronan could. He was well aware that his partner was tactless most of the time. He leaned on his southern accent in a way that worked well with the locals. “Yes, ma’am. I’m detective Parrish and this is my partner, detective Lynch. Is your husband home?” 

“Yeah, he’s here. Come in, I guess.” She turned around and padded into the kitchen. She picked up her glass of red wine and took a long drink before she shouted, “Colin! There’s some cop-guys, or something, here for you!” 

Adam looked around the room. It was clean, there were a few wine glasses in the sink and a block of cheese on the counter of the cutting board. Piper leaned against the counter, her robe revealing much of her tanned, lean legs. 

“What did you say your name was?” She asked Ronan. Her eyes raked up and down him appreciatively. 

Adam scowled, feeling ugly. He wasn’t the jealous type, not usually, but something about the way she was looking at Ronan made his hackles raise. 

“I didn’t,” Ronan replied. 

“Hmph.” 

Adam ducked his head to hide his smug smirk. When he looked up Ronan was staring at him. 

It was unnerving, the way Ronan stared at him. It was like he knew every secret you possessed, every lie you told, and the name of your high school crush. 

Adam blinked and looked away, feeling heat in his chest. His gaze travelled to a giant centerpiece in the middle of the dining room table. It was a massive bouquet of roses. They were all bundled together in a vase tied with a red silk ribbon. 

Colin Greenmantle’s name  _ had _ been on the list that the woman from the flower shop had given them. 

“Lynch,” he said as he moved forward. His fingers hovered just millimeters about the soft petals. They were perfect. 

“How many are there?”

Adam silently counted the full red blooms. He counted them again, this time with his heart pounding in his chest. “Twenty-three.” He swallowed and met Ronan’s gaze from across the kitchen. The woman from the flower shop had told them that they sold bouquets of twenty-four. There was one missing.

Ronan was next to him immediately, his scowl had deepened. “Those need to come with us,” he told Adam quietly.

He nodded. “Ma’am, we’re going to take your flowers with us to the department.” 

Piper was picking at her manicure. She didn’t bother looking up when she said, “they’re starting to wilt. That cheap-ass couldn’t even buy me good quality roses. Take them.” 

Adam nodded and slid on a pair of gloves. He always carried a few things in his department-issued windbreaker. He  _ always _ carried gloves and he always carried bags for evidence. He gently slid the plastic bag over the bouquet so he didn’t hurt any of the roses. 

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Ronan said. 

Adam blinked and turned around, wondering what he could have possibly done for Ronan to swear at him. It wasn’t until he saw Colin Greenmantle standing in the kitchen in nothing but an expensive pair of silk boxers he realized the cussing hadn’t been intended for him at all. 

“Get dressed, asshole.” Ronan moved past Adam to where Colin stood. “We’re taking you to the station.” He took a breath and began to recite the man his Miranda Rights with all of the tact of a kid being forced to read aloud during class.

Once Greenmantle had on pants and a shirt, Ronan set to work putting handcuffs on him. 

Piper sighed and watched the process, her annoyed look growing even more so. “While you’re off doing that,” she said, “I’m going to draw a bath.” She took a full glass of wine and vanished upstairs.

* * *

 

Greenmantle said nothing on the drive to the station and he said nothing now as he sat across from Gansey and Ronan. His hands were placed on the table, he sat back in the chair, an inconvenienced expression had appeared on his face the moment they’d arrived and it hadn’t left since. 

“Would you like a lawyer?” Gansey asked as he sat down. His voice was a little cold, despite the fact that he was speaking in his “professional” voice. 

“I don’t need one,” Colin replied. His voice was chillingly even. “I haven’t done anything wrong and I don’t understand how a simple bouquet got me arrested.” His eyes looked past Ronan and Gansey to the one-way mirror. He seemed to know right where Adam was standing. 

_ He’s done this before _ , Adam realized. Perhaps, he hadn’t been interrogated for murder before, but he had certainly familiarized himself with the process. It was either that, or he’d watched enough cop shows to know how it worked.

“Is this the good-cop, bad-cop routine?” He asked snidely. 

“Of course not,” Gansey replied. “We just have some questions for you.”

“Get to it, then. My wife and I have a wine tasting we’d like to get to sooner rather than later.” 

Gansey produced a single rose from a box of evidence at his feet. It was withered and wilting, the bag it was in was wrinkled. The blood on it had dried brown. He slid it across the table towards Greenmantle. “Do you recognize it?”

Adam folded his arms across his chest and traced the shell of his deaf ear as he watched Colin’s expression. It was disturbingly unruffled. 

“It’s a rose,” Greenmantle replied. “And?” 

Gansey slid a slip of paper towards Greenmantle in response. “It says five days ago you purchased twenty-four roses from Posies Aplenty, the flower shop just outside of Henrietta. There’s only twenty-three in your bouquet.” 

“That doesn’t mean anything. This single flower could belong to anybody.” 

Ronan dropped a stack of photos on the desk, his mouth set in a hard line. His blue eyes flickered with fire and the tension in his shoulders was a steel trap. He said nothing, his actions portrayed everything he needed to say as he slid the photos over to Greenmantle. 

He picked them up, the chains that held his cuffs secure to the table were long enough for him to do that much. 

Adam narrowed his eyes, leaning towards the glass. He scrutinized every detail in Greenmantle’s face and his body language. It was chilling how little the gory photos of the crime scene affected him.

_ This man is a psychopath _ , he realized. 

“Ah, so that’s where that flower came from.” He set the photos down and looked unwaveringly at Gansey. “I bought my wife a bouquet. I didn’t realize it was illegal.” 

“It’s not,” he assured him. 

“I don’t know what this is,” he gestured to the photos in front of him. It was of the bloody, bound wrists of the victims. “I don’t know who this is.” 

The line of Gansey’s shoulders fell a little. They had no evidence to convict this man. There was nothing they could do to put him away. Just because his bouquet was missing a rose it didn’t mean anything. His wife could have thrown it away, it could be in a vase upstairs, given to a friend, anything. Coincidence wasn’t enough to incarcerate a man. 

“Am I free to go?” Colin asked. 

“Yes, of course.” Gansey stood up and reached for his cuffed. 

Ronan got up and and charged out of the room, his eyes stormy. He slammed the door so hard that the glass in the window shuddered. 

Adam stared after him, torn between following him and letting him go. 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kind of a fun one! I hope you all enjoy!
> 
> Also, I'm thinking about making a Love of the Second Degree playlist, so if there's any songs that make you think of this story please feel free to let me know!
> 
> A special thanks to lynchesparrrish!

Colin Greenmantle was like a cough that never went away. Just when Ronan thought he was rid of him, something insignificant reminded him he was there.

Nothing pissed him off more than knowing Noah’s killer was still out there.

Nothing pissed him off more than knowing they had no reason to throw smug-ass Greenmantle in prison. 

Nothing pissed him off more than knowing there was nothing he could do about it. 

He found himself sitting next to Adam’s shitty car outside of St. Agnes church. The funny thing about it, was that Ronan had been attending Sunday mass in this very location for years and had no idea that Adam resided above the church until Gansey had told him. 

Ronan sighed and got out of the car. He climbed the wooden steps to the tiny apartment and knocked on the door. He leaned against the railing of the steps while he waited for Adam to appear. 

When he did, he appeared in a light blue v-neck and a well-worn pair of jeans. His eyebrows had been drawn down in a puzzled look when he opened the door, but they quickly jetted upward when he saw Ronan bravely lounging against the wobbly railing. “Ronan? What are you doing here?” 

“Have you eaten yet?” He asked.

“No...why?” 

“Do you want to go grab a bite to eat?”

“As long as it’s anywhere but Nino’s.” 

It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Nino’s. It was the fact that it still felt oddly unfamiliar with Noah gone and they ate there entirely too much. Ronan was fairly positive that sixty percent of his diet was pizza. 

He gave Adam a smirk and headed down the stairs, “I know just the place. Do you like burgers?” 

“Yeah.”

* * *

 

It was a bar called Double Dees about thirty minutes from Henrietta. It was dim, the air was filled with cigarette smoke and shitty music. 

Adam didn’t look like he belonged here. In his v-neck and khakis he looked like he still belonged at a prep school somewhere. He was terribly out of place in the hazy air, sitting beneath a taxidermied deer head. 

Ronan chewed on the straw from his soda glass as he sat back in his chair. 

“What was your mom’s name?” Adam finally asked.

He blinked, this was an interesting conversation to have moments after sitting down. However, it had done what he needed it to. He wasn’t thinking about Greenmantle anymore. “Aurora,” he replied. 

“That’s a pretty name.”

“She was pretty,” he agreed. No, Aurora hadn’t just been pretty. She had been beautiful. She’d had fair skin, long golden curls, blue eyes, and a loving smile. She had also been beautiful on the inside; sweet, maternal, and loving. 

“What about your dad? What was his name again?” 

“Niall.” 

Adam sat forward and folded his arms on the table. His fingers fidgeted with his watch as he spoke. “What was he like?” He looked up and met Ronan’s gaze, “you don’t have to tell me. I’m just trying to--” 

“It’s fine,” he said. Niall’s death ached like a broken bone, but sometimes it was easier to talk about it that way. Sometimes after he talked about his father, Ronan’s ache hurt a little less. “My mom always used to say that he and I were cut from the same cloth. He was loving, but with a firm hand. He liked making my mom smile and he always used to tell us stories at bedtime.” 

It was just skimming the surface of who his father was, but that ache was starting to become a genuine stab of pain.

“We were close.” 

Adam seemed to know that Ronan was starting to hurt, because he didn’t ask about Niall again. “So...things are pretty tense between you and Declan. Has it always been that way?” 

“No,” he said truthfully. “Declan and I have trouble getting along sometimes, but we’re still family. We still manage to get along well enough to go to church with Matthew on Sundays.”

Adam nodded slowly. He moved his arm out of the way so the waitress could set down their massive burgers and their french fries down in front of them. “You go to church at St. Agnes,” he said. 

“Yeah. How did you know?” 

“I’ve seen your car there a few times during mass,” he replied with a shrug. 

“Parrish, you creep.” Ronan smiled at his burger as he said it. 

Adam smirked back. His fingers closed around the bun of his cheeseburger and he took a generous bite. He chewed it and nodded. Once he swallowed the bite he’d taken he said, “you weren’t wrong. This is probably the best burger I’ve ever had.” 

“Told you,” Ronan said before taking a bite of his own. 

There wasn’t much talking until their burgers were gone. 

“Whatever happened with your dad?” Ronan asked as he smothered a fry in a healthy amount of ketchup. “You know how you said you pressed charges for you and your mom?” 

“Yeah,” Adam frowned a little. “My mom decided to drop the charges against my dad. She called me the other day and tried to convince me to drop the charges.” 

Ronan glared at his soda. Adam didn’t talk openly about his childhood, but from what he’d gathered, it had been a shitty one. 

“I’m not going to. I  _ can’t _ .” 

He felt a sudden breath of relief escape him. 

“Did you know that I’m deaf in my left ear because of him?” Adam asked. 

Ronan stilled. He felt the hot coals in his gut flare up. He silently curled his hand into a fist and rested it on the table. “No,” he finally said. He hadn’t realized that Adam was half deaf. He had always just assumed that he cocked his head funny when thinking. Although, it did make sense. 

“Now you know why I can’t let it slide anymore,” he said. As he pushed what was left of his French fries away from him. 

“I don’t think you should.” 

Adam nodded slightly. 

Ronan had the feeling that it was the end to that particular conversation. He didn’t mind. It was heavy subject matter and he had originally come out to get his mind off of dark shit. He glanced at the pool table adjacent to them. “Do you want to play?” 

Adam smiled and got up, “I don’t think I’ll be any good, but why not?” 

Ronan grinned and dropped a couple dollars into the pool table and picked up a cue. He leaned over the table and took a shot. He looked over his shoulder at Adam, who was watching him with a slightly flushed expression. 

Ronan grinned to himself and lined up for another shot. He knew he looked good playing pool and he liked that he looked good. He especially, liked that Adam was standing behind him to witness it.

Once, Gansey had said, “adores loves a Lynch like a Lynch does.” 

He couldn’t disagree. 

“You staring at my stick, Parrish?” He asked as he moved out of the way for Adam to reach the cueball. 

Adam smirked back at him, “the stick is fine, but I learned a long time ago that it’s all about technique.” He looped a long finger over his pool stick and made a shot. 

The cue ball bounced off of the opposite side of the table, ricocheted back, and whacked a solid ball into the corner pocket. 

“Is your technique always that good?” Ronan asked with a with a dangerous grin. He felt his adrenaline soaring, his blood pumping in his veins. He had flirted with Adam Parrish and Adam had flirted back.

“Most days,” he replied coyly. 

* * *

 

When they got back to St. Agnes, they leaned against the hood of the BMW as the sun faded behind the Virginian mountains. 

It had been a good night, Ronan decided. Things had taken a turn for the shitty lately, but for once he felt like things were starting to look up. 

“Thanks for taking me out tonight,” Adam said. His accent was there, but it wasn’t as formal as it usually was. Instead, it was elongated vowels and clipped syllables. It was attractive in its own way.

Ronan snorted and gave him a playful shove, “it isn’t like I could play pool by myself.” 

“It was nice talking too,” he added. “Sometimes holding all of that stuff in about my family really sucks.” 

“I know the feeling.” 

Adam gave him a curious look. He knew Ronan held in his feelings more than what was considered healthy. 

They said nothing as they watched the sun vanish and the crickets chirp. A few fireflies blinked in the parking lot. 

“Was this considered a date?” Adam finally asked. 

Ronan felt his face flush. They hadn’t talked about the kiss since it happened and they certainly hadn’t discussed going on a date. “Damn, Parrish.” He rubbed the back of his shaved head before he said, “if I had known this was a date I would have worn something a little more fancy.” He gestured to his black tank and dark jeans. 

Adam gave him a look that said he was kind of being serious. 

Ronan felt his heart stutter. “No,” he finally said slowly, “because if this was a date I’d have to walk you to the front door and then we’d have to make out. Then, your parents would have to catch us and they’re not here.”

He got a pensive look, the firm line of his lips turned up just slightly. It was a smile that was barely there. He nodded and knocked his knuckles off the hood of the BMW thoughtfully and then he stood up straight. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow I guess.” 

“I guess,” Ronan agreed. 

Once the door above the church had shut Ronan turned around and kicked a road-worn tire with the toe of his boot. “Lynch, you stupid son of a bitch,” he cursed before throwing himself into the driver’s seat. He pulled out of the parking lot cursing himself for not being brave enough to kiss Adam again. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a few people I'd like to thank. First of all, I'd like to thank lynchesparrrish (on tumblr) for being awesome and reading Love of the Second Degree but also letting me rant and rave about the new Pynch fic I've been trying to plot out. 
> 
> I'd also like to thank veronicahague, noorasdandekar, and uchi for leaving such touching comments on the last chapter!

Ronan looked at the stack of papers Gansey had dropped on his desk. 

He’d been having a perfectly content morning not doing much of anything except shredding old documents and writing emails. 

“What’s this?” He asked. 

“It’s deskwork,” Gansey said. “I know how much you hate it. Unfortunately, there isn’t much more I can do at this point. We’re all working on things and we could really use your help with it.” 

Ronan noticed the dark circles beneath Gansey’s eyes, the tired lines on his face. He knew how he was an insomniac. Gansey had spent many nights awake obsessing over Glendower. Now, he was obsessing over Noah’s killer. 

He didn’t point it out. There was no point in stressing Gansey out even more about how he didn’t sleep. So, he asked, “How was dinner with Blue’s family?” 

“It was eventful. Her family is very...gifted.” 

“They’re psychics?” 

“Yes, and I believe they’re very credible ones at that.” 

Ronan nodded a little. He wasn’t entirely sure he believed in psychics or any of that stuff, but Gansey always had a knack for believing in the unbelievable. 

He flipped open the first folder and frowned. The picture was of a man named Barrington Whelk. He turned to the next page. This photo was also of Barrington Whelk...only this one was him after he’d bled to death on a drab grey carpet. 

“This is the last victim?” He asked Gansey, who was still hovering by. 

“Yes. We’ve identified him as Barrington Whelk, age twenty-six. Review the evidence and see what you think.” 

“Alright,” he agreed. He picked up the portfolio and settled in. Whelk had been a teacher at the local school, he’d been fairly broke considering he got a bi-weekly paycheck. He never showed any signs of being malicious. 

Perhaps, the killing was money related? They saw money-related murders all of the time. If someone owed somebody else money, often they ended up dead. Especially, if they owed them a lot of money. 

Ronan picked up a pencil and scratched that thought down on a post-it note on his desk. That way, he could go back to it later and see if it was a reasonable hypothesis. 

“Could be,” Adam said as he pushed his desk chair right up next to Ronan’s. “That could mean that all of the wannabe’s killings are money related. That would give us a motive.” 

Ronan looked at Adam. His eyes studied the way his long lashes brushed against his freckled cheeks as he studied the files in front of him. 

Adam turned his head and looked at Ronan. His eyes travelled from his eyes, to his lips, and back again. 

Ronan warmth blossom in his chest, but he shoved that thought away. They had a murder to solve. Now wasn’t the time to think about how they’d shamelessly flirted with each other just a few nights ago. 

He cleared his throat and turned his attention back to the evidence. His fingers trailed delicately over the photos and the profile. 

Ronan swallowed and re-wet his mouth with the water bottle on his desk. 

He glanced up at Adam before looking down and turning the page. “Do we have any evidence that states that it could be money related?” 

Adam shook his head and sighed, “no. We don’t even have any physical evidence that actually connect money as a motive. It’s just an idea.”

“Hm.” 

Having a motive would certainly help them figure out who the hell was pretending to be Owen Glendower and why. It was kind of unbelievable that they hadn’t found a motive yet and that the killer hadn’t slipped up. 

However, if the killer was a Glendower fanatic it wasn’t surprising that each of their killings left behind no evidence that helped pin down the killer. Glendower had killed nearly one hundred people without giving away who he was and even after the detectives had figured it out, they hadn’t been able to catch him.

Ronan closed the first folder and opened the second one. He stared at the profile with a bitter taste on his tongue. 

Noah’s smiling work ID photo was on the front page...right next to the photo of his face caved in and beaten bloody. 

His stomach rolled. 

Adam looked away from folder, his face had turned sickly.

“Gansey,” Ronan growled, “what the fuck?” 

Gansey turned around at his desk and looked at Ronan. It took him a moment to figure out why his best friend was cussing at him. “Oh,” he said, his voice sullen. He reached up and pushed his wireframes up his nose. “Yes. I’m sorry Ronan, but I’ve been up all night staring at those two files and I need a fresh set of eyes on it. Yours, unfortunately, are the ones that have seen it the least. I think Barrington Whelk and Noah’s case are related somehow. I just can’t quite put my finger on it.” 

Ronan’s brow furrowed as he looked between the files. “What makes you say that?” 

Gansey got up from his desk and moved to lean across Ronan’s, between him and Adam. “You see,” he said flipping to a certain page in Whelk’s case study and another in Noah’s. “At Noah’s crime scene, the murder weapon was left behind. It was the tire iron out of a 2003 Buick. They come in each vehicle, you know.”

He made a sound of agreement and slouched back in the chair, his arms folded across his chest. 

“Which, happens to be the car Barrington drove. There happened to be trace amounts of blood spatter on the rear quarter panel of the car. We picked it up with a blacklight. I’m almost certain that he was Noah’s killer.” 

“It sounds solid to me,” Ronan said. “Why do you want me to look at it.” 

“It’s not quite enough,” Gansey said. “We need just a little more to fully determine that he was the one who did it. Can you do it?” 

“I’ll try.” 

He nodded and bumped fists with his friend, “ _ excelsior _ .” 

Ronan frowned and craned his head over the evidence files again. Seeing the photographs of Noah’s evidence was hard. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to throw up or kick something. 

His eyes skimmed the glossy photographs. Noah’s blond hair was matted to his head with blood, his skull was crushed, the pavement behind Nino’s was a massive stain of red. 

_ Blood soaking into the dust in the driveway, the door dinging to the BMW, Niall’s hair a black matted mess, the crowbar lying in the dirt smattered with bits of brain and flesh… _

“Ronan?” 

Adam’s voice sucked him back to the present. Ronan’s heart was pounding against his ribs, his lungs were burning because he’d been holding his breath. He balled his fists up and squeezed them to keep them from shaking. 

“Are you okay?” Adam had that stupid fucking wrinkle between his brows he got when he was worried. His blue eyes were dark with concern. 

He didn’t lie. Ronan wasn’t a liar. He lifted his arm and started to chew on the leather bracelets Opal had made him. He decided it was best not to answer instead of answering dishonestly. 

Adam seemed to know this was his default reaction, because he nodded once in a knowing way. “Do you want to talk about it?” 

“Fuck no.” 

He seemed to know this was also Ronan’s other reaction because his shoulders slumped slightly and he went back to looking through evidence. 

They worked in silence as the clock ticked away the hours of the workday. 

“Here,” Adam finally said stabbing at a photograph on the desk. “Tire tracks at the murder site match up with the tread on Whelk’s car.” 

Gansey was at his side instantly, his eyes were lit up with excitement. He picked up the photo of the bloody tire tracks and the photo of Whelk’s car, one that happened to have the rear tire in it. “Parrish, you genius! You’re brilliant!” 

Adam’s face lit up in a smile. 

Ronan felt fire burn through his chest. It was rare that Adam Parrish smiled a true, happy smile. He wished he could see that look on his face every day. 

“I’m sure his parents will be relieved. I know I am,” Adam said. 

“Me too.” 

Ronan was too. That weight that had been pressing down on him had finally lightened up slightly. He stood up and swiped his car keys off the desk. It was time for him to get the fuck out of the office. If Declan had a problem with it, he could kiss his ass. He said, “I’m glad that bastard got what he deserved.”

For a brief moment or two, Adam looked conflicted. His face got that impossibly smooth look he got whenever Ronan brought up his past. Then, that expression dissolved into one that was haggard and tired. “So am I,” he confessed. “So am I.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I am working on a new fic and I'm not about to totally spoil everything, but if anybody has any Heaven & Hell/Angels & Demons title ideas, shoot them my way. I really need a title for my next masterpiece.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last "boring" chapter before we get to the good stuff! Unfortunately, that means that this story is so close to coming to an end. I'm hoping to upload the first chapter of my next fic on the same day that I upload the final chapter of this fic. However, writing is hard and plotting out a good story is even harder so I'm not sure if that will happen or not. 
> 
> Shoutout to lynchesparrrish on tumblr!

Ronan had thought that old people had the most boring lives. He had been wrong. It was trophy wives; because even Gansey’s ancient English friend, Roger Malory, had a more exciting life than Piper Greenmantle. 

Two days prior Declan had stood at the front of the office and ordered them to keep tabs on the Greenmantles. 

Somehow Ronan and Adam had gotten stuck watching Piper Greenmantle go about her boring life. When she wasn’t at her ridiculous home in the country, she was at book club, yoga, or the winery. It was awful. She was a typical stay-at-home wife. 

He lounged in the driver’s seat of the BMW, chewing on one of the bracelets around his wrist. Declan had told him to take them off because they weren’t professional.. Ronan had told him to eat shit. Opal had made them for him and he wasn’t about to take them off. 

“How much wine do you think they go through a week?” Adam asked as his eyes watched Piper’s blonde ponytail as it vanished into the winery down the street. There were circles beneath his eyes from lack of sleep. 

The two of them had spent the past two days taking turns sleeping in the passenger seat of the car while the other kept watch. 

“Fuck if I know, it all tastes like piss.” 

Adam nodded his head once as if to agree. 

“They probably keep it locked in one of those lame-ass expensive basements.” The Greenmantes seemed to be the type that had thirty year old wine in their musty wine cellar. They were so ‘extra’ (according to Opal that was a word the middle school kids said now) that it wouldn’t surprise Ronan if they had barrels of wine in the cellar for aesthetic.

In the passenger seat, Adam snorted. “Probably. After seeing their house I wouldn’t be surprised.” 

Ronan leaned over the gearshift and opened the glove box. Adam’s deodorant was a strong earthy scent that he couldn’t help but love. He wanted to roll up in a blanket that smelled like that and sleep. 

He pulled a bag of candy from the glove box and shut it. He turned his head to look at Adam. From this close he could see the fine blond stubble that was growing on his jaw. They hadn’t had time to shave over the past few days. They’d had just enough time to shower and change their clothes while Gansey and Cheng kept tabs on the Greenmantles house. 

It would be so easy just to lean over and kiss him again. It would be so easy to press their lips together and pretend like the countless hours in this car hadn’t completely fucking sucked. 

His eyes skimmed over Adam’s lower lip, where he had gnawed off some dead skin. 

“Ronan,” Adam’s voice was deep and rough in silent spot where the songs were changing over the radio. 

He ignored the electric shiver that danced across his skin when he heard his name fall from Adam’s lips. Instead, he sat up and lounged in the driver’s seat. He tossed up a piece of candy and caught it in his mouth. He gave Adam a cocky grin, “gummy?” 

There was an amused twinkle in Parrish’s blue eyes as he reached out and plucked a gummy from the package and mimicked Ronan’s action. However, he missed his mouth and it bounced off his forehead. 

“Holy shit, you’re not perfect at everything!” 

His smirk didn’t leave as he accepted another piece of candy and tried again. It bounced off of his cheek, but he managed to save it before it hit the floor. “I’m not good at  _ everything _ . I can’t sing for shit.” 

“Bullshit. With your local twang, a guitar, and a dog that’s your girlfriend, you could totally be a country singer. None of them can sing anyway.” 

“Ha-ha.” 

Ronan caught another gummy and chewed it with a grin. His smile did fade when Adam’s expression focused on something down the street. He saw Piper leave the winery and climb into her SUV. He silently wondered what the fuck she needed a car that size for. She rode in it with her hairless rat-dog. 

He waited until she pulled onto the road and a few cars drove between them before he followed. 

Adam pulled his notebook out from beneath the seat and started to hastily scribble down notes on the lined paper. He was noting when she left the winery, where they were going, and undoubtedly what time they would get there. 

“How long is Declan going to make us follow her?” Ronan wondered out loud. 

“Until something better comes along,” Adam offered. 

“That could take weeks!”

“I don’t think he’ll make us watch them for weeks, but maybe for a few more days.” 

He groaned and pulled into the parking lot of the local Super-Mart and climbed out of the BMW, slamming the door as he went. 

Piper went straight to the garden section. She didn’t look back once and she didn’t seem to notice they were there. Which, was a good thing. The whole point of following someone secretly was kind of ruined if they learned you were following them. 

Adam’s fingers trailed over a variety of garden hoses. “You know,” he said quietly. He paused and shook his head a little. “Nevermind. It’s stupid.”

Ronan looked at him with a slight frown. “What? No, you have to tell me.” 

He hesitated, his fingers on his left hand reaching up to trace the outer edge of his deaf ear, as it often did when he was reminiscing about his shitty childhood. “When I was younger, my mom would send me to the store for things and I’d fantasize about this stuff.” 

“Garden hoses?” Ronan clarified, puzzled.

“No, just...stuff.” He looked at him, there was something self-deprecating in the set of his mouth and in the depths of his eyes. “I’d dream that one day I’d be able to just pick up anything off a shelf and buy it. I never wanted to worry about price tags, you know? Instead of getting the cheap cereal I could get whatever I wanted instead.” 

The tattooed man couldn’t relate. He didn’t know what it was like to not have money. His father had ensure that the Lynch family had been well-off. When he’d died he’d left millions of dollars to each of his sons. Ronan had never looked twice at price tags. Hell, he hardly looked at them once. 

“I thought maybe I’d be a doctor or a lawyer...maybe a politician,” Adam continued. “However, I like this job. Financially, we do well. I don’t have to work three jobs anymore.” 

“Three jobs?” 

Color flooded Adam’s cheeks and he nodded. 

“Christ, did you have time for anything fun?” 

He smiled wryly, “no.” 

This was new information and Ronan wasn’t quite sure he knew how to process it. Adam had grown up with an abusive, drunken father. He’d clawed his way out of poverty by graduating from a college that he’d worked three jobs to afford. “Christ.” 

Adam glanced at Ronan, his eyes raking his face. “Things are better now,” he said with a smile that said he had an unspoken secret. He blinked and jerked his chin in the direction that Piper Greenmantle had exited the store. 

They followed quickly--but not too quickly--to make sure she didn’t slip from the sight. 

“Goddammit,” Ronan swore as his eyes raked the parking lot for her. He didn’t see her, but her car was sitting in the space. She didn’t appear to be anywhere near it. “Where the fuck did she go?” 

Adam looked just as bewildered as he did. “I don’t know! I--” 

“Excuse me?” A voice called to them. 

The two whirled and saw Piper Greenmantle standing behind her shopping cart, a perfectly threaded brow raised, a hand on her hip. 

“Ma’am,” Adam said pleasantly. 

“Don’t ma’am me,” she scoffed. She pressed a massive blooming plant into his hands. “If you two are going to spy on me, you could at least make yourselves useful and load all of this shit into my car. Got it?” 

Ronan met Adam’s stunned gaze. He gave Piper an icy look, “fu--” 

“Here, carry this. It’s heavy and don’t drop it.” She hefted a stone bench decoration and thrusted it at Ronan. 

“Jesus Christ,” he swore as he reluctantly followed Piper Greenmantle to her stupid SUV. He made sure to flip her yapping naked dog off before he slammed the rear hatch. 

She didn’t bother to thank him before she got in and drove off. 

“What now?” Adam asked uncertainly. “Do we follow her?” 

“What’s the point?” Ronan scoffed. He glared at a shopping cart, sitting abandoned in the lot. He gave Adam a shark-like smile. He grabbed the handle. “Parrish, climb in the cart.” 

“You’re joking.” 

“Shut up and get in. Lighten up.” 

Once Adam was carefully folded into the cart, Ronan took off running. Once he picked up enough speed, he stood on the bars and let it coast. 

Even after they hit the BMW and toppled over, scraping their elbows and knees on the pavement, they couldn’t stop laughing. 

Ronan’s sides ached and his lungs burned, but it was okay. He hadn’t laughed like that in a very long time. 

Sprawled on the pavement between the shopping cart and the BMW’s tires, Adam was pressing a hand to his chest as he laughed, his freckled face red. His laugh was a glorious sound.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the excitement begins!
> 
> Thanks to lynchesparrrish!

Ronan sat outside of the school as he waited for Opal to emerge. He’d gotten a call from the principal saying that she’d been suspended for the remainder of the school week for punching another student in the face. 

Even though he knew he shouldn’t be, part of him was proud. Whatever the little shit had done or said to her, he’d obviously deserved it for being a dick. 

She threw her backpack into the backseat, not caring that it had dumped half of her books in the process. She fell into the passenger seat with a bitter scowl and folded her arms across her chest. She glared out of the windshield in a way that made Ronan think that maybe she’d learned such a look from him. 

He reached up and turned the radio down. “Opal,” he said. 

“Don’t. I don’t want to talk about it. Just get me out of here.” 

He wasn’t about to argue with her. There had been a time where he had felt like he entire world had been against him. He’d turned to Kavinsky and some not-so-smart choices to make himself feel better about it. He know how she was feeling.

Compliantly, he turned out of the parking lot. 

“Can we stop for lunch?” She asked a few minutes later. 

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Are you joking?” 

“No! I’m hungry.” 

Ronan knew he shouldn’t reward her with her favorite french fries and a milkshake, but they were his favorite fries too and he was fucking hungry. “Alright,” he said, “I’ll take you to grab some lunch, but this isn’t a reward for being an asshole in school. I’m hungry and this is my lunch break.” 

God, he hated how much he sounded like his brother. 

She tucked a few strands of blonde hair behind her big ears, “fine.” 

Thirty minutes later the two of them were hunched over sandwiches and a basket of fries. He knew he should try to talk to her about what happened. He knew she’d punched another student but he didn’t know why and he wanted to make sure it was justified. 

She reached out to dunk a french fry in her vanilla shake. 

Ronan reached out and plucked the milkshake out of her reach.

“What the hell?!” She demanded crossly. 

“Opal,” he said sternly (god, he  _ really _ sounded like Declan now), “what happened at school?” 

She folded her arms across her chest and stared down at the table. Her expression said she clearly didn’t want to talk about it, but she knew it had been wrong. For an entire minute Ronan waited. Just when he thought she was about to take a permanent vow of silence she said, “he was making fun of my brother.” 

_ Oh _ . 

Ronan probably would have punched whatever loser had been making fun of her dead brother too. Hell, he had punched people for a lot less. 

He silently slid the milkshake back into her reach. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to that. “People are dicks. It sounds like he deserved it.” 

“He did.” 

He knew if he were Declan, this would be the part where he lectured about actions having consequences and that her actions shouldn’t be repeated. But he wasn’t Declan. “I would have punched him too.” 

Her small face lit up with a smile for the first time since Ronan had picked her up. She happily dunked her fry in her milkshake. 

“But that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.” 

Her gray eyes narrowed at him, “what?” 

“You’re still in trouble for hitting that loser.” 

“You’re joking.” 

He gave her a look that told her he most certainly wasn’t joking. 

“Am I  _ grounded _ ?” 

“I don’t know yet,” he answered honestly.

He picked a few fries from the basket between them with a small frown. He had to come up with a suitable punishment. She didn’t have a cell phone and she was good about doing her homework. Hell, she hardly watched television. She mostly stayed up in her room doing moody pre-teen girl shit. 

He chased his fries with his Coke before he sat back. “You’re going to have to get up in the mornings and help me with chores.” Upon seeing her relieved expression, he quickly added, “ _ actually _ help me. Like, you’re going to have to shovel shit.” 

Her face wrinkled into an indignant scowl. “For how long?!” 

“Until your suspension is over.” 

“Fine,” she huffed. 

Ronan pulled his wallet out and left thirty dollars on the table for their bill and the waitress. “Come on, brat. I’ve got to get gas, take you back to the barns, and get back to work. I’m sure Declan is already having an aneurysm.” 

* * *

 

“Stay put,” Ronan said as he got out of the car. “I have to go inside and pre-pay because the neanderthals in this town don’t have a card reader at the pump. Christ, this is the twenty-first century.” 

“No problem,” Opal said. She was busy scrolling through the playlists on his phone and didn’t seem to care that he was leaving. 

He slammed the door to the BMW and headed inside. 

He stood impatiently at the counter behind some guy who wanted to know what the winning lottery ticket numbers were for the night before. Once he finally paid, he went out the back door of the gas station because there was a woman trying to jostle a stroller through the front. 

Two men were lounging against the hood of a black SUV as he tried to pass. One stepped in front of him and stopped him with an arm on his shoulder. “Do you have a light, bud?” 

Ronan scowled at him and looked at the hand on his shoulder. “No. I don’t smoke.” Something about this felt  _ wrong _ . 

“Oh.” The man’s beefy fist curled into the fabric of his shirt. 

Fury bubbled up inside of him. He barely managed to contain it. “Get the fuck off of me,” he snarled, shoving the man’s broad chest. 

The man shoved him back, his eyes glistening with amusement. 

That was the last straw. Ronan didn’t even know what he was doing until he crashed a clenched fist into the man’s face. 

He didn’t know where the two patrons in the store and the clerk had gone. He was actually surprised that the cops hadn’t been called in the first two minutes of the fight. There was cursing, grunts, and bloody noses. 

Ronan was a skilled fighter. Niall had taught his two oldest sons to box when they’d been younger and it was a skill Ronan in particular had mastered. However, it was two against one and he was losing horribly. 

Blood dripped from his nose and broken lip. His fists were bloody, his knuckles split. He was a wildfire, unable to be contained. He lunged at the first man again, his fist connected with his mouth. Teeth bit into his knuckles, sharp and painful. He pulled back, ready for another hit. 

“Son of a fucking bitch!” He growled as the second man grabbed him from behind. He let out a pained grunt as the first man’s fist connect to his stomach three times. He had trouble catching his breath. 

In a desperate attempt to be released he threw his head back. He saw stars as his head connected with the man’s head behind him. Once he was free he spun around and delivered a series of blows to the second guy’s face. He felt a sick satisfaction as the man fell to the pavement, unconscious. 

He whirled around and faced the first attacker. He wiped a fist across his chin, it came back crimson. The coppery taste of blood in his mouth made only added fuel to the fire. He was uncontrollable, angry. It was the type of blind fury that only Gansey could tame because he was the only one that knew how. 

“Your turn, asshole.” He let out an animalistic snarl before lunging at him. 

Before his fist had the chance to connect with the man’s bruised skin, Ronan collapsed. He felt like he’d grabbed right onto a live wire and he was being seared alive from the inside out. He fell to the concrete, writhing.

His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he thrashed on the ground. 

When the agony finally stopped he managed to crack his eyes open. 

Piper Greenmantle stood a few feet away, looking incredibly inconvenienced. “Do I have to do everything myself?” 

Ronan couldn’t put together a coherent thought, let alone a sentence. He was too dazed to really process what had happened. His eyes followed her expensive sneakers, up her legging-clad legs and to her upper half. She held a taser in her hand. 

“You know what they say,” she said with a sigh. “If you want a job done right you have to do it yourself.” She curled her lip at Ronan before looking at the men putting themselves back together. “Are you going to at least put him in the car for me? Or do I have to do that myself too?” She scoffed and turned away from them before opening the driver’s side door. “Fucking morons.” 

Ronan thought he might finally be able to drag himself to his feet. He began to push himself up on shaky arms. 

“Hey, asshole.” 

He looked at the first goon just in time to see a steel-toed boot collide with the side of his head. 

Then there was nothing but blissful emptiness. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some pretty big bombshells are dropped in this chapter! Hang on to your hats, folks. 
> 
> Thank you lynchesparrrish for hearing me rant about Holy Hell (my next fic) and helping me with LoTSD!

 

Adam glanced at the clock for the third time within the hour. His frown deepened and he checked his watch, just to make sure the time on the clock hanging on the wall was correct. It was. 

Ronan had left before lunch to go pick Opal up from school. He’d grumbled something about her getting into a fistfight with another student and said she got suspended. As he’d tossed his keys from hand-to-hand he had mentioned something to Adam about telling Declan for him that he’d be late getting back from lunch. 

Late was twenty minutes. Not an hour. 

Adam wasn’t surprised to see that Ronan had decided to take off the rest of the day just to spite his older brother. He did things like that just to get a reaction from him. Although he half-expected it from his partner, it was still an inconvenience. 

It meant that Adam was left with all of the paperwork Ronan hadn’t finished before he left, which was to say, all of it. He was going to be at least an hour late clocking out. It didn’t bother him that much, he was used to working long hours for less pay. 

He sighed and picked up the notes from Ronan’s desk so he could type up an official report on the past few days they had spent watching Piper Greenmantle. 

His feelings for Ronan were becoming an intricately complex beast that was hard to discern. He needed to talk to him about the kiss. They hadn’t talked about it since it happened and Adam felt like he his head was going to explode if he didn’t get some things cleared up.

Maybe he’d talk to Ronan when he got off work. The Barns was just a few miles out of his way. It wouldn’t take long to stop over and try to make sense of the mess going on in his head. 

His fingers had just started to settle into a comfortable rhythm over the keyboard when Gansey’s phone rang. 

Gansey answered it in the voice he used for speaking with the public. 

Adam didn’t stop in his typing, but he did cock his head slightly to listen to what Gansey was saying to the person on the other line. 

“Opal, what? Slow down.” His tone had changed entirely into one of concern. His fingers pinched the bridge of his nose as he spoke. “You’re  _ where _ ?” 

Adam stopped typing and sat up straight. He didn’t pretend to be disinterested anymore. Judging by the tone in Gansey’s voice, something was  _ very  _ wrong.

“When did he go into the store?” He paused and looked at his expensive watch. “And he hasn’t come back? There’s...there’s blood?” 

A shiver ran down Adam’s spine and he was on his feet before he realized he’d moved. 

“Stay put, okay?” Gansey met Adam’s gaze, his brow was creased with worry. 

Something had happened to Ronan. 

For half a second Adam felt a severely disoriented sense of  _ deja vu _ . The entire world had rotated off of its axis. 

_ Not again _ , he pleaded silently. He’d gone through this with Noah and the thought of losing Ronan too was unbearable. 

Gansey reached out and put a steadying hand on Adam’s shoulder. He stared at his friend, trying to assure him confidently with his eyes. 

Adam saw through his false confidence. 

“We’ll be right there, Opal. Okay?”  He hung up the phone and sighed, his shoulders slumped with the weight of this fresh burden. He swallowed and looked up at Adam. “We have to go. Ronan’s gone missing.” 

* * *

 

Ronan feels like he’s stupidly decided to lay down in the middle of a busy intersection and allowed the traffic to roll over him. His nose was throbbing, his one eye was swollen shut, and he had chipped one of his lateral incisors. His head felt too heavy, but he managed to lift it up and look around anyway.  

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he spat to the empty room. 

He had only been kidding just a few days prior when he said that the Greenmantles had barrels of wine purely for the aesthetic. As it turns out, they  _ did _ have barrels of wine in their cellar, right next to racks and racks of dusty wine bottles. 

He didn’t know how he felt about being tied up in the Greenmantles cellar. The most easily discernible feeling was anger. Hell, he was past angry. He was  _ pissed _ . The next easy feeling was disbelief and the last one that was easy to pick up was annoyance. 

They’d had Colin Greenmantle in the fucking department. They’d interrogated that bastard and he’d still been able to walk free. 

He frowned, the movement made the cut beneath his eyebrow sting like a bitch. No, that wasn’t right. Colin Greenmantle hadn’t been at the gas station where Ronan had been jumped. It had been…

“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” He spat again, jerking his wrists, which had been restrained behind his back. 

“Not kidding,” Piper said as she emerged from a door at the other end of the cellar. She took a sip of her wine and set it down on a shelf adjacent to Ronan. “You know, I usually like to do this kind of thing anywhere but my house.” She inspected her nails and frowned as she rubbed at the hot pink nailpolish of her manicure. “The blood is such a hassle to clean up. That’s why I just leave it for you and your little detective friends.” 

“ _ You _ ?” Ronan demanded incredulously. “ _ You _ and your husband are the Glendower wannabees?” Christ, he couldn’t help but think that sounded like a bad boy band name. He silently cursed himself for thinking it immediately after. 

Piper’s flawless face contorted into one of disdain. “ _ Colin _ ?” She asked scornfully. “Of course you men would think that Colin was behind all of this. Please,” she snorted and rolled her eyes, “he’s a spineless coward. He’s in Boston for the weekend.” 

Colin Greenmantle had been innocent the day that they’d arrested him and took him into the interrogation room. He had been innocent this entire time...because his wife was fucking murdering people!

Something about the revelation hurt Ronan’s already throbbing head. He hadn’t expected it to be her, of all people. For fuck’s sake! They had never even really considered her a suspect. If anything, they’d only ever thought she was an accomplice. 

Piper Greenmantle kidnapped people, tied them up, carved a ‘G’ into their chests, slit their wrists, and left a roses as parting gifts. It was really,  _ really _ , fucking weird. 

“Why?” He asked as he struggled with the bonds on his wrists. They were impossibly tight. There was no way he was going to be able to slip them. “Why did you start killing people?” 

She picked up her wineglass and studied the lip gloss stain she had left on the rim. “Well, the first guy sold me a faux diamond bracelet that I paid  _ a lot _ of money for. When I confronted him about it I got so angry I just…” she shrugged, “killed him. Of course, I couldn’t be charged for  _ murder _ . So, I made it look like the most infamous serial killer of all time decided to pick up his old hobby.” 

A diamond bracelet. That was had had started all of this. This entire mess had been created because Piper was too materialistic to let some fake diamonds slide. 

Ronan shook his head, “unbelievable.” 

“The second one sold me a doll that was supposed to be possessed. It wasn’t. So, I killed him.” 

“And the rose?” Ronan asked. “Why change it? Why kill Glendower and then make it look like it was your work instead of his.” 

“Well, after I killed him and that other guy, I realized how easy it was. Glendower had been the _ king _ of killers. I thought it was time that he was surpassed by a queen.” 

“You’re joking.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, “do I look like I’m kidding?” 

Ronan considered her question seriously. She didn’t look like she was kidding. She looked like she was batshit crazy. “No,” he finally ground out. 

“What about Whelk?” He asked. “You killed him too. Why?” 

She rolled her eyes again, “usually my prisoners aren’t this chatty.” 

“I’m curious.” 

“He did a piss-poor job of getting rid of your nosy friend. He was supposed to do it quietly. Bashing his head in and throwing him in a dumpster behind the most populated restaurant in town isn’t exactly my idea of quiet.” 

Fury burned through him. “You fucking bitch!” He snarled as he yanked against his restraints. “You had Noah killed! If I get loose you’re going to wish you were already dead!” 

She didn’t look concerned. “Your friend was looking a little too closely in my direction. He was starting to figure things out. I was hoping his death would deter you guys from looking too closely. You all are too stupid to just let it go.” 

Ronan’s blood was boiling. He was blind in his anger and grief.

Once, he had told Opal that he was in the business of finding bodies and not making them. If he hadn’t been so tightly bound, he would have made an exception that statement right here and now. 

“Your friend was figuring out too much. Which,” she said as she set her empty wine glass down. She stepped closer to Ronan and smiled sweetly, “is why I have to kill you too.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's almost over and I don't want it to be! Waaah!
> 
> lynchesparrrish on tumblr is my homegirl even though she's been busy for the past few days and can't hear me rant about Holy Hell.

“Opal,” Gansey said as he approached the BMW. He opened the door and stepped aside so she could get out. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” 

Adam tried not to think of how wrong it was to see the car and not its owner anywhere around. It made him nauseous.

Her eyes were wide and watery as she nodded, “I’m fine.” Her voice was thick when she spoke, “I didn’t even see him come out of the store. I…” her voice cracked with Adam’s heart. 

Poor Opal. She had already lost the people closest to her. She couldn’t lose Ronan too. 

Gansey looked as torn as Adam felt. He nodded and asked, “are you okay going to Fox Way?” 

The girl nodded and sniffed. She rubbed her sleeve across her nose and then hunched over, curling into herself. 

“Alright. I’m going to call Blue so she can come get you. Okay?” Gansey looked at Adam to make sure he was okay before turning away and punching Blue’s number into his phone. 

“Hey,” he said moving to stand next to Opal. “It’s alright. We’re going to find him.” 

Her lower lip jutted out, trembling slightly like she was going to fall apart. 

Adam felt his heart disintegrate. Without thinking, he reached out and folded her into a soft embrace. “It’s okay,” he murmured to the the top of her blonde head. 

“No it isn’t!” She wailed before burying her face into his tan coat. She threw her arms around him. Her words were muffled as she sobbed into his chest, “he wouldn’t have been taken if he hadn’t picked me up from school.” 

He swallowed and looked at Gansey. He hoped his friend would get off the phone soon. Adam wasn’t good at feelings. He was good at distancing himself from problems and looking at them with an intuitive eye. “Don’t think that,” he said firmly. “Opal, I think whoever took him as been watching him. They were going to take him one way or another.” 

Her shoulders shook as she cried. 

He wanted to sink into the pavement and disappear. He didn’t know how to help her. 

Gansey reappeared, his phone in hand. “Blue will be here in a few minutes.” 

Adam just nodded and rubbed Opal’s back in an attempt to soothe her. 

When Blue arrived, Opal still hadn’t released Adam and Gansey looked like he was chomping at the bit to get to work. 

“Honey,” Blue said softly as she brushed Opal’s hair away from her face. She gave Adam a look that asked  _ how long has she been crying like this _ ? 

Adam looked down at the way the girl’s tears had soaked into his tan trench coat as a reply. 

“Opal,” she tried again. “The boys have to get to work. They’ll find him I promise.” 

Finally, Opal pulled back and released Adam. “You promise?” She sniffed looking between him and Gansey. 

“Of course,” Gansey said. He pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of his coat and pressed it into her hand. “Ronan will be home before you go to bed.” 

Adam gave Gansey a reproachful look. Of course, he didn’t know that. However, the Glendower wannabe (if that’s who had taken Ronan) was typically quick to act. 

Gansey gave him a firm one in response. 

Opal took the handkerchief and nodded. 

“I’m sure you’re tired. Crying makes me tired too,” Blue said softly. She gently guided Blue towards the community car of Fox Way. “There’s some chocolate in the glove box. It’s my mom’s. I won’t tell her you ate it.” 

Adam watched as Blue safely tucked Opal into the passenger seat. There was something sweet about the way she handled the girl. It was much different to the independent, sassy woman Blue typically was. 

Blue returned and looked over her shoulder at Opal, who was watching carefully, ensuring that nobody else was slipping away from her. She looked at Adam and Gansey, “find him.” 

Gansey reached out and gave Blue’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, “we will.” 

She turned to Adam. Something in her gaze seemed to know that something deeper had been transpiring between him and Ronan. She wrapped him in a hug. “He’s going to be okay,” she breathed into his coat.

Adam swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. He hugged Blue back, “thank you. I know he will be.” 

After he released her, she hugged Gansey. “Be careful,” she murmured into chest. 

Gansey leaned down and kissed the top of her head, “we always are.” 

This seemed to satisfy her because she stepped back and gave them both one more look before turning and hurrying back to her car. The sooner she got Opal out of there, the sooner they could find Ronan. 

They watched the car disappear down the road before Gansey turned to Adam. His face had shifted to something more professional and calculating, however his eyes were wild and determined. 

It was a good look on him. 

Gansey pulled out his badge, “let’s go.” 

As they rounded the back of the store, Opal had been right. There was quite a bit of blood scattered across the sidewalk behind the store. 

It wasn’t enough that made Adam think that there had been a stab wound. No, it looked like blood from superficial wounds. Perhaps a bloody nose or two.

Adam felt nauseous. He crouched down and looked at the smears of rusty blood on the concrete.  _ He’s okay _ , he told himself.  _ Ronan is going to be okay _ . “There was a struggle here. I’m almost certain of it.” 

Gansey nodded at Adam, “let’s go look at the security footage.” 

When they flashed the badges at the clerk behind the counter, the poor kid looked completely bewildered. “I can’t get into the office!” He exclaimed as he looked to the door just a few feet away from where he stood behind the counter. “My manager has the key and she just left, like, two hours ago.” 

That wildfire in Gansey’s eyes was slowly turning into an inferno. He leaned very close to the teenager, his posture stiff and threatening. In a very cold, uncharacteristic way he commanded, “that door will be opened in less than five minutes or we’re kicking down. Understood?” 

“Y-Yes!” The kid squeaked before he began to dig around for a spare key. 

This was a side to Gansey that Adam hadn’t seen before. Typically, Gansey was put-together, carefully composed, and polite. This Gansey was on fire. He was wild. He wanted answers and he was going to do whatever was necessary to get them. 

Three minutes later they he and Adam were hunched over the computer monitor as they rewinded security footage. 

“Right there,” Adam said as he pointed to when Ronan slammed the door to the BMW and headed for the store. He felt a cold fist clench his stomach tightly. What if they were too late? This footage could be the last thing they saw of Ronan alive. 

_ No _ . They couldn’t be too late. They  _ wouldn’t _ be too late. 

He leaned closer to the monitor as he watched Ronan prepay for his gas and exit out the back door instead of the front. 

“That’s why Opal didn’t see him come back outside,” Gansey murmured quietly. 

Adam nodded silently. 

He felt bile rise up in the back of his throat as two men started to beat the shit out of him. However, he was fairly impressed (and proud) to see Ronan hold his own against them. 

Gansey didn’t tear his gaze from the footage, “do you recognize them?” 

“No. We probably don’t know who they are either.” 

“Do you think they’re hired?” 

“They could be,” Adam said. “It’s hard to tell. If they aren’t from town, I’d almost guarantee that somebody hired them to…”  _ to kill Ronan _ , he said silently. 

On the film, Ronan was lunching for one of the assailants, but fell straight to the ground, writhing. 

Adam exhaled a shaking breath through his nose. He forced himself to stay rooted where he was and not turn away. 

One of the men kicked Ronan in the face. Then, both he and his partner talked to somebody off screen. Then, they picked up Ronan and tossed him carelessly into the back of a black SUV. 

“The plates are obscured,” Gansey noted. His voice was tight with frustration. 

Adam nodded. He felt cold from head to toe. 

They had beat the shit out of Ronan, tased him, kicked him in the face, and then tossed him in the back of a car like he was nothing but a sack of potatoes. Like he wasn’t human. 

He could hear the blood in his ears. 

“How are we going to trace the car if the plates are obscured?” Gansey asked. He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. 

Adam didn’t know. He felt the dread in his stomach grow. His eyes lingered on the footage. “ _ Wait _ !” He lunged forward and rewound it and paused it. He squinted at the screen. “That’s a hairless dog in the passenger seat. Do you know who has one?” 

“Colin Greenmantle,” Gansey said knowingly. “But Cheng and I followed him to the airport this morning. It doesn’t make sense!” 

Adam shook his head, “no. His wife, Piper. She always takes that thing with her wherever she goes. It’s not him. It’s  _ her _ .” 

* * *

 

If Ronan had to listen to anymore of Piper’s speech about how she planned to take Glendower’s claim to fame, he was going to take her wickedly sharp knife from her and impale himself  _ repeatedly _ . 

He gave an exasperated sigh, “can you shut the fuck up?” 

She blinked and scowled at him. “Wow, that was really rude. You know, when did captives stop being grateful?” 

“What could I possibly have to be grateful for?” 

“You’re not dead yet. You should be thanking me.” 

Was she serious? He was pissed off and annoyed that she was dragging this out. Then again, a small part of him was hoping Parrish and Gansey would come bursting through that door at any given second and save his ass. “Yes. Thank you so much for kidnapping me, tying me up in your pretentious dungeon, and  _ not _ killing me.” 

She rolled her eyes at him and picked up her refilled glass of wine. “Anyways, so I watched a documentary about this Glendower guy and I was like, wow. He’s really good at killing people. So, I thought maybe I could be not only as good as him, but better.” 

Ronan cussed under his breath and set to worrying at the knots around his wrists. They were just as resistant as ever. 

He tuned out the rest of her speech, hoping to God that Opal had been smart enough to call Gansey when he hadn’t returned. He was sure she would have. She was a smart girl. 

“...so, that’s why I have you tied up in my wine cellar,” Piper finished. She set her glass of wine down and approached him. She ran her thumb along the blade of her knife. 

Ronan knew he should be scared, but seeing the hot pink handle made it lose its shock factor. It kind of seemed like it was a toy instead of the real thing. 

“This might hurt a little bit,” she said. “But you can scream here. There’s nobody but the cows to hear you.” 

The knife pressed into the soft flesh of his wrist, above the bonds that held him tight. 

It certainly felt real when the point dug into his skin and blood dripped from the blade, 

Ronan grunted, trying to shift away from her. He couldn’t. His legs were bound in two places, his arms were tied behind him. 

Then, when the knife actually  _ cut _ him he let out a string of vicious curses. 

His wrist was throbbing where the first cut had been initiated. The blood was hot and smelled coppery from where it poured from the wound. 

When she cut the second and third slashes on his one wrist he tried not to freak out. Okay, she had cut him deep. There was a lot of blood. He could feel it dripping off of his fingers and hear it splattering onto the concrete floor of the cellar. 

His heart was racing in his chest. He didn’t even feel the three slashes she left behind on his second wrist. 

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” he snarled as she returned to the front. 

Piper raised a brow at him. Her thumb smeared the blood on the blade and she reached out and wiped it across Ronan’s cheek. “It’s a little late for that. You’ll be dead long before me. It doesn’t take long now.” 

_ Oh god _ , he thought. He hadn’t had the chance to tell Adam how he really felt. He had never returned the movies he’d borrowed from Gansey. He had grounded Opal and that was going to be the last thing they’d done together. He hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to Matthew. 

Piper leaned close and dug the tip of the knife into his chest. “This one kind of hurts too,” she explained. “The bone is right there, you know?” 

The fact that she seemed completely unperturbed by her actions was rather chilling. 

Ronan let out scream as she began to carve a jagged ‘G’ into his chest. 

She paused and looked at him. She rolled her eyes. “Stop being dramatic. You’re going to be dead soon anyway.” 

“ _ Stop _ ! For fuck’s sake, just stop!” He screamed as he thrashed below her. The only thing he could smell was the smell of his own blood. 

She didn’t stop.

He screamed again.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! Sorry for posting late, but I figured better late than never!
> 
> This chapter is 1) full of feels, 2) the best part of the story, and 3) 1,000 words longer than what I normally post. It was originally supposed to be two chapters, but I had trouble meeting the 1,500 word count I set for myself for each chapter, so they got merged into one.
> 
> Sorry in advance for multiple Ronan/Adam POV switches.

There had been countless times when Adam and Ronan had poked fun of Gansey’s driving. Once Ronan had even said, “ _ come on, Gramps. You have all of this pure American muscle waiting to be released and you drive it like it’s your great-aunt’s Buick. _ ”

This was not one of those times. 

Adam had never seen so much live fire in Gansey’s eyes. He looked like he was going to burn up anything in his path if he got too close. It was a look he was used to seeing on Ronan, but it wasn’t a terrible look on Gansey, either. 

The camaro was a live beast, charging and willful to Gansey’s commands. When he mashed the gas pedal into the floorboards, the car snarled in response and pulled forward mightily. 

Back in school, Adam had watched a movie in his history class about gladiators racing chariots. That’s how he imagined Gansey now, standing at the helm of a shining chariot holding the reins of an unstoppable, wild horse. 

In his chest, Adam’s heart felt like it was in a competition with the RPMs on the dash in front of Gansey, going four thousand beats per minute. 

He was counting the minutes backwards. He’d been doing it since they’d gotten the call in the office. It had been a little over two hours since Ronan had been taken. Each minute that passed felt like a death sentence.

The idea that Ronan could possibly be anything but alive when they found him was enough to force Adam into an anxiety attack. He hadn’t had one since he was seventeen, after he had learned that his school had called his father because Adam had accidentally overpaid for a college scholarship application.

The difference now was that Ronan’s life hung in the balance between whether or not he was able to keep his shit together.

“Gansey…” He warned, low and anxious. They needed to go faster. They needed the distance between them and the Greenmantles’ home to be shorter. They needed  _ anything _ that would buy Ronan more time. 

“I know, I know!” He snapped as he shifted into fifth, passed a minivan, and slammed the car back into sixth gear. He picked up the radio that was tucked down beneath the seat. “This is Detective Gansey,” he said. His voice was powerful and firm as he spoke. Not even the President would argue with him with that tone. “We’re approaching twenty-eight Helmview Farm Road. I need an ambulance on standby.” 

The fact that he was calling an ambulance wasn’t exactly reassuring, but it was nice to know that if Ronan needed help, there would be one close ready. 

Adam exhaled a shaky breath and looked in the side mirror. 

The road behind them was alight with red and blue lights of police cars as they sped behind them. Their sirens wailed a terrible song.

It sounded like they were screaming,  _ hurry! Hurry! Hurry! _

The closer they got to the farm, the more bitter Adam’s fear tasted as it crawled up the back of his throat. 

Gansey entered the one-lane driveway exceeding forty miles per  hour. He skidded the camaro to a halt just a few breathtaking feet from Piper’s massive SUV. He climbed out and left the door hanging open in his haste to get out.

Adam was right behind him. He pulled his gun from its holster and clicked the safety off.  _ We’re here, Ronan. We’re here. _

“Check the car. Make sure Lynch isn’t in there,” Gansey barked to the other officers who were arriving on scene. “Hold the perimeter, make sure she doesn’t slip past you. Parrish, let’s go.” 

Adam didn’t have to be told twice. He held his gun up and followed Gansey onto the porch. He waited for Gansey’s nod before he twisted the knob of the front door and pushed it open. 

It swung open willfully, without so much as a creak to announce their presence. 

He stepped inside, his eyes carefully scanning each nook and cranny of the kitchen. “Clear,” he announced. 

Gansey did the same for the living room. 

Within minutes the house was cleared. 

Adam really felt sick to his stomach. Piper hadn’t brought Ronan here. Where had she taken him? They didn’t know and it was going to be too late. 

“Where could he be?” Gansey hissed, clearly as distraught as Adam felt. 

Adam’s mind worked furiously to conjure up a concrete solution. Piper didn’t typically kill people in her home. She always killed them and left them at the scene. Almost every single time they found a body it was at their home. 

Dread filled him to the brim. He blinked and looked up at Gansey. “The Barns,” he whispered through numb lips. 

“What?” 

Adam moved forward and grabbed Gansey’s shoulders in a frantic gesture that would have pissed Adam off if anybody had done it to him. “Every time Piper kills someone it is usually at their home, where they live. What if she took him to--” He was cut off by a muffled heart-stopping scream. 

Gansey locked eyes with him. 

“ _ Ronan _ !” the two of them exclaimed at the same time. 

“The cellar,” Adam said, rushed. He looked around frantically for a door. There had to be one around here somewhere. “That came from the cellar!” 

Once again, his heart was in overdrive.

They searched frantically for the door that could lead them to the cellar. Gansey finally found it in the kitchen. 

Adam followed him down it, gun pointed and ready to fire. He didn’t care that he was being none-too quiet as thundered down the wooden steps. “Open the door, Gansey!” 

“It’s locked!” Gansey exclaimed as he jiggled the handle. He slammed into it with his shoulder a few times. 

If anybody asked him, he’d blame it on the adrenaline. He felt like there was enough of it pumping through his system to allow him to lift a car without feeling fatigued. “Move!” He exclaimed. 

“Are you really going to kick it in?” 

Adam nodded. 

“Do you think it will work?” 

“It’s going to have to.” 

Adam took a step back, focused on the fire burning in his heart, sucked in a breath, and slammed his foot into the door, inches from the lock. 

It swung open with mighty, splintering crash that Ronan would have been impressed with if he had been in better shape. 

Gansey stepped in without hesitation, his gun pointed at the woman carving a shape into Ronan’s chest. “Piper Greenmantle, put the weapon down.” 

Adam couldn’t hear anything as he stared at Ronan. 

His face was bloody and swollen, his head hung to his chest, like it took too much energy for him to hold it up. His shirt was torn and tattered, revealing half of  a glistening crimson ‘G’. The blood was running down his wrists, dripping off his fingertips, and forming in an impressive pool beneath his chair. The smell of the blood was toxic. It made him want to gag. 

He couldn’t move. His lips formed a single word without his permission, “ _ Ronan _ !” 

* * *

 

The pain in his chest felt like he’d been repeatedly struck by lightning. His wrists throbbed with each beat of his heart. His head was too heavy to hold itself up. Ronan let his head bow as he felt cold seeping into his bones. 

His thoughts were coming sluggishly now. 

When the door crashed open, he made  a conscious effort to lift his head. He blinked his blue eyes (well, the one that would open) blearily. Was that  _ Adam _ ? Was that  _ Gansey _ ? It was hard to tell with all of the spots blurring his vision. 

Gansey was barking at Piper, telling her to drop her weapon. 

A faint smile formed on his lips. Opal had done it. She had called them and told them he was missing. God, she was such a fucking smart kid. He was going to unground her when he got home.  _ If _ he got home. 

He rapidly blinked the spots out of his vision again. His friends were still there. He wasn’t hallucinating them. 

How long had he been bleeding for? Two minutes? Ten? He had no idea. The only thing he knew was his chest fucking hurt and he was feeling really light headed.

He locked eyes with Adam, his smile widened just a hair.

_ Fuck _ , his head was too heavy. He let it slump forward again. It was too exhausting to hold it up. He just needed to close his eyes for two seconds and he’d feel better. 

He let his eyes slide closed. 

* * *

  
  


Gansey was ordering Piper to drop her knife, but Adam wasn’t listening. 

He couldn’t stop staring at Ronan. His eyes could stop staring at the still-growing puddle of blood beneath his feet, he couldn’t smell anything but the acidic copper-smell of Ronan’s blood. He couldn’t hear because his ears had started ringing when Ronan let his head drop back to his bloody chest. 

They needed to get him out of here. He was going to die if they didn’t hurry. 

“I don’t get why you’re snarling at me like that,” Piper said. Her mouth was pressed into an inconvenienced line. “He’s already dying. It’s not like you can help him now.” 

_ That _ got Adam’s attention rather quickly. 

He had always been afraid of being like his father. He had spent  _ years _ trying to tamp down the Robert Parrish in his blood. He had spent ages trying to remain in control. He had never snapped and acted irrationally. 

However, he felt his carefully crafted control slip from his grasp. It was a fragile thing, held together by delicate slivers of self-esteem. When it fell, it  _ shattered _ and Adam felt the box’s ugly contents spill out and consume him. 

“You heard him,” he snarled. He had never heard so much raw fury in his own voice before. Part of him wanted to back away and forget how much he sounded like his father, but it was too late for that. 

Piper opened her mouth to argue indignantly, the hot-pink knife still in her grasp. 

Adam didn’t give her time to start a counter-argument. Instead, he lifted his gun and pulled the trigger. He had never shot a person before. Hell, he had never even swung a punch at anyone in his life, but when he pulled the trigger it was different. 

He wasn’t shooting a person. 

Instead, he was shooting a target, just like he had done when he’d gotten certified to carry his pistol. 

The  _ bang _ was the loudest thing he’d ever heard. It made his ear ring. It was followed quickly by the clatter of the knife skittering across the concrete and Piper’s horrified scream. 

Her eyes flashed as she clutched her mangled hand to her chest. “You  _ fucking shot me _ !” She snarled ferociously. She took a predatory step towards Adam, but Gansey’s words stopped her. 

“And he’ll do it again if you don’t stop and put your hands behind your head.” 

Adam once again admired the control that Richard Gansey III had in his voice. If he would have spoken, his voice would have trembled and cracked with the influx of adrenaline that was coursing through his veins. 

Slowly, she lifted her hands and placed them behind her head. 

That single motion opened the invisible gates that forced the two men into action. 

“Get Ronan,” Gansey said quickly as he pulled out his handcuffs and started to recite Piper her Miranda Rights. 

Adam didn’t have to be told twice. He rushed forward to where Ronan sat slumped in the chair. All of a sudden, his heart was beating against his chest like a drum. “Ronan,” he breathed urgently. His fingers gripped his stubbled cheek and picked his face up. “Ronan,” he repeated around the lump in his throat. 

Ronan eyes twitched behind his eyelids. 

“Lynch,” he said a little more firmly. He patted the side of Ronan’s face. “Open your eyes. Look at me!” 

His eyes cracked open just enough for a sliver of blue to show. 

“Stay with me, please.” Adam begged. His eyes were stinging, a hot tear made its way down his cheek. “Ronan,  _ please _ . Gansey is calling for the ambulance to come get you, okay?” 

Ronan’s eyes opened and focused on Adam for half a breath before they rolled into the back of his head and slumped in the chair again. 

“Fuck, fuck!” Adam assessed his color. Ronan was pale with his Irish complexion, but he looked absolutely ghoulish. “ _ Ronan _ !” He shook him desperately. His felt a sob build up in his chest. “Ronan, look at me!” 

No response. 

He was crying in earnest now, his chest heaving and shoulders shaking. “You can’t die on me, you bastard!” He snapped. He wiped his tears angrily with the sleeve of his coat. 

Ronan’s eyes half-opened again. 

Adam felt a very subtle release in his fear. “You can’t die on me! You hear me, shithead?” He sniffled again and shook Ronan again. “Because..” his breath caught in his throat and had to find his voice again. “Because I fucking love you, okay? Don’t close your eyes.” 

* * *

 

Everything had been in hyperdrive after Gansey and Adam had burst through the cellar door. Ronan’s thoughts were running increasingly sluggish so he had a hard time processing the fact that a gun had actually been fired just a few feet away. 

Things came in glimpses after that. 

Piper had a bloody hand (good. That bitch fucking deserved it). 

Gansey was cuffing her hands behind her. 

Parrish was gripping him by the jaw, trying to shake him into consciousness. 

Ronan felt like he was at the bottom of the coldest sea. He felt like he was floating even though he was tied to a chair, He could hear Adam talking to him, but it sounded like he was talking underwater. 

Adam’s hands are warm and soft as they pressed against his skin. Those fingers he loved so much were less than an inch from his lips. God, he fucking loved Adam’s hands. 

His dark blue eyes were teary, rimmed with red, and full of fear as he spoke frantically to Ronan in a drawl he was too unaware of to try to hide. 

He was so fucking glad Parrish and Gansey were here. He at least was going to get to see them one more time before he died. Although...that meant that they were going to watch him die.  _ That _ would ruin his friends and Ronan most certainly didn’t want that. 

“ _ Because I fucking love you, okay? Don’t close your eyes _ .” Adam’s voice was urgent and muffled. 

Ronan blinked slowly. Did he just say that he loved him?

Horror ripped through him for a fraction of the second. He thought for just a moment that he was already dead, because that was the only logical explanation in his mind that Parrish was confessing his love for him.

Although, this didn’t look like the Heaven he’d learned about in church. If he’d suffered through hours and hours of Sunday sermons only to be sent to Hell anyway, he was going to be pissed. 

Adam’s fingers were pinching the skin on his jaw. It was the realest thing in this dull, underwater world he seemed to be floating in. 

Ronan smiled. He was still alive and Adam fucking Parrish had just said that he loved him. 

He managed to lock eyes with Adam before they slipped shut and he let himself get dragged into unconsciousness. 


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end, my friends. This is such a bittersweet moment. I'm honestly kind of sad it's over. I couldn't have done it without lynchesparrrish (on tumblr) and the support of all of those who have liked/commented on this story. 
> 
> However, I assure you this isn't the last story you'll see from me. I promise you that Holy Hell is on it's way. The plot is developing (slowly) and it's going to be bigger and I vow that my writing will be even better by the time the first chapter gets posted. 
> 
> If you want any trc one-shots or to fangirl/boy with me feel free to drop by my inbox at tumblr (all-my-dreams-and-ambitions). 
> 
> Thank you all so much for your love and support! Until next time, my lovelies!

Added to the list of things Ronan Lynch hated, right behind baling hay, was  _ hospitals _ . The nurses could never let him get a goodnight’s sleep, the bandages around his wrists fucking itched, and the wing he was staying in had a strange smell of C-Diff covered up heavily with antiseptic. 

What was even more annoying than being in the hospital was being there while his friends were finishing up the Greenmantle case. He rather be doing desk work than lounging on scratchy hospital sheets. 

He looked up from the annoying plastic tube that tied him to a bag of fluids above his head, when he heard Gansey’s voice on the television. He looked totally in his element, poised and professional, as he answered the media’s questions pertaining to the case.

It had played five times in the past day and a half. Ronan was fairly certain he could recite Gansey’s words verbatim. 

He had to admit, it was the most exciting thing the town had experienced in a long time. Sure, finding Glendower’s body had caused an uproar of activity in the town, but finding a killer before they’d actually killed their victim was exciting. Especially, when that killer had been behind multiple murders. 

A knock sounded on the door, soft and cautious. 

Ronan assumed it was Opal coming to visit him after school. As it turned out, it was just Adam. 

He remembered the feeling of Adam’s fingers against his skin, “ _ because I fucking love you, okay? _ ” He blinked and gestured for Parrish to take a seat. “Where’s the runt?” 

“She had soccer practice after school,” he replied as he eased himself into a chair at the side of Ronan’s bed. He looked at the tiny blue rose in the vase on the bedside table that had a note in Blue’s handwriting, telling him to get better soon. 

“Has she actually been helping you do chores?” 

“Yeah, she does a pretty good job. She tells me how you do it to make sure I do it right. She’s a stall-mucking machine.” 

Ronan raised an eyebrow in surprise. Opal was often just an object for Ronan to trip over when he was doing chores, even if she insisted she was “helping”. 

“Yeah, I was surprised too.” 

He hadn’t said anything, but Parrish was observant. No wonder he had figured out where the fuck to find Piper before she succeeded in murdering him. 

Their eyes locked. 

Ronan remembered the fear in Adam’s eyes, the tears tracking down his freckled cheeks, the way his voice had cracked when he had told Ronan he loved him. 

Adam blinked and looked down and then back up to meet his gaze again. Apparently, he remembered it too. 

Ronan picked up the can of soda sitting on the bedside table. He took a drink and set it down disdainfully. He would have much rather had something with a little more alcohol in it for the question he was about to ask next. “Did you mean it?” 

His partner didn’t respond right away. Ronan actually had to look back at him to make sure Adam had heard him. 

The look on his face told him that he knew exactly what night he was talking about and he knew exactly which part Ronan was asking about.

“When you said you loved me,” Ronan repeated, “did you mean it?” 

There was a pensive look on Adam’s face, the one he often got when he was thinking about something in his past. There was a slight tilt to his lips that made Ronan think it was something amusing. 

He silently wondered what part of having shitty parents was humorous. 

Adam smiled in earnest now. He looked down at his hands as he spoke, “when I was younger, my parents had me convinced that I wasn’t capable of love. They told me that I was too selfish  for it, too ugly inside and out.” 

Ronan stared at him and did his best to contain the renewed loathing he felt for Adam’s parents. Who the fuck said shit like that to their kid? Christ, no wonder Adam didn’t ever really talk about his parents. 

His tongue darted out and licked his ever-chapped lips. “Honestly, I thought they were right for a long time. Most of my life, really.” 

Ronan’s heart sped up. The increase in heart rate was displayed on a monitor above his bed. Adam was talking past tense. Did that mean he  _ did _ love him? 

Adam looked at the numbers and smiled. It was a rare, genuine smile that Ronan wished he could plaster over every public surface for the entire world to see. “My mind is constantly working to solve problems, worrying about what people think of me, trying ensure that I never turn into the man that raised me. When I’m with you, all of that stops.” 

His brow furrowed, “what does that mean?” 

“That means that when I’m with you, I’m not worrying about any of that stuff. I don’t have to try and compartmentalize every thought I have. I don’t have to try and pretend that I’m somebody I’m not. I don’t know, I guess I’m trying to say that you make my mind quiet.” 

“What the fuck, Parrish? I didn’t ask for a riddle. Just answer the damned question.” 

Adam laughed softly and fixed Ronan with a warm look. “Yes,” he finally said. “Yes, I meant it when I said I love you.” 

He felt like he was flying, even though he was tethered to various tubes and wires attached to the bed. He couldn’t believe it. He was in love with Adam Parrish and he loved him back. There was one thing that Ronan was uncertain about, however. “So, what happened after we kissed…” 

“I’m sorry about that,” he apologized. “I was still trying to deal with everything that happened at the funeral. I shouldn’t have avoided talking about it for as long as I did.” 

Ronan was just as guilty as Adam when it came to avoiding talking about the kiss. He’d avoided it for fucking  _ weeks _ . 

“I’d like to try it again, though.” 

He grinned and looked at Adam, who looked like he was fucking  _ glowing _ as he sat in the chair next to Ronan’s hospital bed. “What are you waiting for? Get the fuck over here and kiss me again.” 

Adam leaned over the bed rails, he smelled like forest and deodorant. His smile was blinding and oh-so-sweet as he pressed his lips to Ronan’s again.  

* * *

 

 

**Epilogue**

 

Early in the morning, the forest was alive with all kinds of creatures. There were birds singing their good mornings to the sun, startled chipmunks darting away in the underbrush, and four hikers trekking their way up a mountain beneath a canopy of dewy leaves. 

“Christ, how far up this godforsaken mountain do we have to hike?” Ronan grumbled as he followed Adam up the hill. “We better be able to touch the sky when we get to the top.” Secretly, he was enjoying himself. Although, he was fairly certain his friends saw right through his grumpy facade. 

“The more you complain,” Blue said from up ahead, “the steeper it gets.” She was smiling at him in a teasing way. 

Ronan snorted and rolled his eyes at her, but there was no real disdain in it. He watched as Gansey and Blue walked side-by-side. Every now and again, their fingers would brush together. He wasn’t exactly sure when the two of them had started officially dating, but he was fairly certain it was before he’d nearly died. 

They hiked silently through the woods, the leaves crunching underfoot. Ronan felt side-stitch setting in, but he didn’t mention it. 

“Sargent, are you taking us out here to murder us?” He called up to them. “You’re going to have to wait until next year to try. I’ve used up my near-death experiences this year.” 

“Why would you think that?” She replied, looking over her shoulder at him. Her backpack was nearly wider than the rest of her, only a corner of her eye peeked around it. 

“Because I can’t imagine why we’d possibly need to venture this far into the woods.” 

“Ronan,” Gansey called back, “you’re whining more than Malory.” 

He made a face. He’d met Roger Malory once when he had stopped by to congratulate Gansey on finding Glendower. The man had complained about  _ everything _ ; the food on the airplane, his taxi, the fact that his hotel room hadn’t had any tea, etc. 

Adam bumped into Ronan with his shoulder, “stop being such a shithead.” 

He grinned at his boyfriend and stepped over a log. He whistled to Chainsaw, who flapped to a tree closer than the one she’d been occupying previously. 

The forest seemed otherworldly with its autumn foliage. It was almost...magical. The air was cool and crisp, the autumn leaves underfoot were crunchy with frost. The leaves overhead were steaming as the rising sun started to burn it off the canopy. 

Ronan chewed on one of the new bracelets Opal had given him. Piper had cut through the ones she’d given him initially. His scars hidden beneath them were bright pink in comparison to his pale skin. “Do you think he’d like this?” He asked them. 

“Noah came up with something like this at our high school. It even has its own designated day,” Blue told him. “I bet he would.” 

Gansey looked down at his handheld GPS and pushed through a section of low hanging branches before he disappeared out of sight. “We’re here!” He called back to them. 

Ronan stood next to Adam on the massive rock that jutted out from the side of the mountain. Once again, he was struck by the forest’s natural beauty. 

The sun was coming out up ahead, painting the sky in various shades of pink and orange. The trees below were a collage of red, yellows, and greens. It was breathtaking. 

“Wow,” Adam breathed next to him. 

Ronan smiled at him, memorizing the way the orange sunlight illuminated his dusty hair and painted his freckles a different shade of pale brown. 

Blue pulled her backpack off and dug opened it. 

The rest of them did the same. 

“For some reason this makes me think doing this is anti-environmental,” Ronan said as he pulled out a paper raven. “Isn’t this against your moral rules, Sargent?” 

“The paper is biodegradable,” Blue said. 

Gansey looked over at all of them. “Are you ready? We’re just going to throw as many of them over the cliff as we can?” 

“That’s the idea.” She took a breath and led the countdown.

Adam spoke up, his eyes fixed on the perfectly symmetrical lines of his paper raven. “Shouldn’t we say something about Noah first?” 

They all looked at Gansey. 

Gansey opened and closed his mouth hesitantly. It was clear that he had thought about it, but wasn’t really sure he wanted to do it. It felt too much like a final farewell. “Ah, yes. Noah was vibrant and full of life. He was special to each and every one of us. What happened to him was unfair and unjust, but I know that if he were here right now he wouldn’t want us to remember him any other way than the way he was when he’d been living.”

Ronan swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. He wanted to clench his fists, but didn’t because he didn’t want to render the first paper raven flightless.

“Was that good enough?” Gansey asked, his eyes behind his wireframes were requesting approval.

“It was just right,” Adam said quietly.

Blue took a silent breath in, like she was gathering her courage to jump off the edge of the cliff instead of throwing over a carefully constructed piece of paper. “Three...two... _ one _ .” 

“Blastoff,” Ronan muttered before he launched his paper raven over the rocky edge of the cliff and grabbed another, and another. 

The air was full of paper ravens spiralling downward through the canyon as the sun came up. 

Blue cheered, egging on the ravens. 

Gansey was smiling at the sight, his eyes a little watery. 

Adam smile was sad, but genuine. 

Ronan felt sadness settle in his chest, but he put his arm around Adam. His eyes followed Chainsaw as she shot past them to join the paper ravens in their descent to the valley below. 

For a long time, none of them said a word. The moment was so painfully intimate that it felt wrong to interrupt it.

Gansey reached out and linked his fingers with Blue’s. His lips parted and he spoke a single word that couldn’t have fit the moment any better, “ _ excelsior _ .”


End file.
